I felt my resolution waning, as an almost overmastering desire to seize her in my arms, in the face of shocked and respectable Bloomsbury, swept over me.
“We’ve got to follow the trail to the end, Dorothy,” I answered. “Everything’s going to be all right, don’t worry.”
As I turned away, I felt a light touch, almost like a caress, on my coat sleeve. Accident or not, no knight ever went into battle more inspired by his lady’s gage than I, bearing that accolade, strode towards the old book shop and the mysterious laboratory on the fifth floor.
Tom greeted me eagerly as I reached the second story. “Not a sound from the laboratory,” he began. “And, luck of lucks, there’s an open, empty room opposite, where we can wait. Come on up.”
Up the stairs and into the empty room we passed, pausing briefly to examine the blank and heavy door of the mysterious workers fastened by heavy locks. Our waiting place proved nothing more than a bare attic chamber, with a constricted view of roofs and chimney pots.
“Not exactly the abode of luxury,” I said, glancing around critically, “but then it’s all in the day’s work. I’ve waited in worse places for a lot smaller stakes.”
Folding his great coat for a cushion, Tom seated himself back against the wall. He had left the door a trace ajar. “I’m practically sure that there’s no one in there now, and we’ll wait here till they arrive. We shall be sure to hear them when they come up the stairs. By Jove, never thought of it. Not a thing to read with us. There’s the book shop downstairs; I wonder if I dare to try a sortie.” He thought a moment. “No, not yet, anyway. Tell you what I’ll do. Here’s a sporting proposition for you.” He pulled out his penknife and opened it. “Here’s a bully bare floor. I’ll play you a game of stick knife to while away the time.”
Nobody but an eternal boy like Tom would have conceived of a game of stick knife to while away the time of waiting before the mystery hidden by the blank face of the oaken door across the passage. Nobody but an eternal boy would have won so exasperatingly. Expert in all intricacies of the art, Tom had far outdistanced me as a knife juggler and I was lagging far in the rear, when we heard the quiet closing of the door five stories below. In an instant we were on our feet, waiting for the ascending heavy footsteps. Tom’s mobile face stiffened into rigid lines as he crouched, poised beside the door, while I stood ready to swing the door open, and spring if necessary on the man who came. As the footsteps halted on the landing before us, Tom bent towards me.
“The assistant,” he whispered, “let him unlock the door and we’ll push our way in with him.”
Everything happened in the twinkling of an eye. The jingle of keys, the slight creak of the opening door, then a sudden bound and we were across the hall and in an anteroom facing a bewildered man, evidently a Norwegian, whose blond face was framed in flaxen hair and spade-shaped flaxen beard, and whose somewhat cowlike eyes peered out from spectacles of massive frame. He was clothed in a queer, straight-fronted, long, blue sack coat with voluminous, almost sailor-like trousers. As he saw us standing on either side of him, he started back for a moment, but then stopped short, his keys still dangling from his hand.