I stood there mute. This was a new Dorothy, a silent, questioning woman different from the one I knew, and yet like her. I could not seem to collect my scattered wits enough to be of any service.
With an effort, Dorothy squared her shoulders. “Come on,” she said firmly, and we started out for the door, Tom and I a couple of steps behind.
“Good for you,” I whispered, as we turned in beside the haberdasher’s shop and started up the stairs, at whose top we were forced to believe stood the laboratory of the man we sought, the workshop of the man who was trying to stop all war.
As we reached the second landing, Tom turned to me. “This is the queerest mixture of fireproof and firetrap I ever heard of,” he ejaculated. “Iron stairs and wooden landings, with two doors on each side. Wonder if it keeps on like this all the way up?” It did; iron stairs and wooden landings succeeded each other, till the fourth story showed two doors, one on either side of a landing dimly illuminated by a skylight.
“It’s one of the two,” whispered Tom.
He tried one door softly,—locked. Tried the other. To my surprise it opened, and a bare room much like that where Tom and I had waited through the weary hours in Bloomsbury met our view. Just at that moment we heard a footstep clang on the iron stair below, and around the bend the handle of a broom came into sight, followed by an arm clad in the sleeve of a coarse jumper. The janitor halted in amazement as he saw our phalanx of three standing in the empty room. Before he could open his mouth, I addressed him.
“I want to rent this room,” I said. “It suits me in many ways. What’s the rent?”
“Four pund a month, sir, thank you,” came the answer.