“Dorothy,” I began again.
At that very moment the door flew open and Tom, red and breathless, dashed into the room. Dorothy sprang towards him like a startled fawn, and I was left with outstretched hand, the modern Tantalus of London. Tom was too excited to notice our positions.
“Well, I must say you are a pretty pair,” he exclaimed. “All this work and trouble gone for nothing, because you wouldn’t take a little bit of care at the end. You call yourself a newspaper man. There’s only one department you could handle and that’s the Obituary column.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked, coming down to earth.
“Matter,” cried Tom disgustedly, “the whole thing’s up so far as this clue is concerned, and we’ve got to start in all over again. I’ve seen ‘the man,’ and if you had been even reasonably alert you’d have seen him too, and we would have him trapped.”
“You’ve seen ‘the man.’ Are you sure?” asked Dorothy breathlessly.
Tom nodded gravely. “I have, and I think for some reason that he knew me,” he answered more slowly. “When I left you I went over to the office on the other side and waited. I sat just where I could see if any one opened on my side. I had been there perhaps half an hour when the door opened, and a man in a slouch hat, whose face was hidden in the dim twilight of the hall, stepped out. Just as he caught sight of me, he jumped back and locked the door. ‘That’s the time for Jim,’ I said to myself, and ran to the window and waved. I could have waved my arm off, I believe, and you would never have known it, so when I realized that, I hurried down and over to these stairs. On the third flight, I heard steps coming down the fourth. I came up very softly and there, just descending, was the man in the slouch hat. When he saw me, he threw up his arm across his face, said what sounded to me like ‘You again,’ and backed away into the darkness of the corner. I followed, but before I could reach him, a door behind him flew open and he dashed through, slamming it in my face. I flew against the door and it gave. By the time I was in the room he was across it and out the other door. I followed him down the stairs but lost him in the street. If you people had been half decently on the watch, we’d have had something, but now he knows we’re after him and he’ll simply disappear from here. But I believe I’ve seen that chap somewhere, before. There was a queer familiarity about him, and what did he mean by, ‘You again?’ It’s barely possible that your old theory may be right, Jim, or it may be that you have driven Regnier so into my head that I looked to find him in a man I don’t know at all.”
“Well, I know,” said Dorothy, with a sudden reversion to her old independent spirit. “It isn’t. But how did the man happen to have keys in his hand for those doors on the story below. I don’t understand that.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Tom. “I was in too much of a hurry to get at the chap to pay any attention to the way he unlocked the doors. Of course there is a bare chance that the fellow may be a harmless citizen who mistook me for either a highwayman or a lunatic.”