"Glad you asked that. When you leave, don't go for the elevators, but take the stairs. On the third floor you'll find the freight elevator waiting for you. Now, is there anything else?"
The photographer had a few questions to ask, and Good studied Furniss while he answered them. The little reporter was like an animal on the trail of its prey. His thin nostrils contracted and expanded as he talked, and there was a lithe, nervous tenseness about every feature of his face. Good thought with half a shudder that he would not care to have Furniss on his trail. And yet, even as the thought struck him, he was conscious of the little man's eyes upon him, boring him through, as if that were precisely what he was about. He tried to rid himself of the absurd notion, but it persisted. One of the characteristics of Furniss was his complete impersonality. He might, almost unaided, devote months of single-handed, implacable effort, as in the famous Varney case, to tracking down and placing a whole company of men in the penitentiary; but never with the slightest hint of vindictiveness. He sought out corruption and punished its authors always for the solitary reason that thereby he made news. He was like the bloodhound, which pursues its quarry as long as it has breath in its body—only to overwhelm it with caresses.
But now, Good fancied, the impersonal note was gone. It seemed to him, why, he could not say, that Furniss had a purpose other than to unearth news. There seemed more mastiff than bloodhound in him, more lust for blood than love of the chase. Again and again he told himself how silly it was, but he could not rid himself of the suggestion that he was the goal at which the reporter aimed.
By eight o'clock the three had begun their vigil. At intervals Furniss fixed his eye to the keyhole, turning to stare, with what Good thought a very slightly concealed malevolence, at himself. The air was surcharged with expectancy.
The air was surcharged with expectancy
Good smoked his pipe and wondered what it all meant. The photographer lit one cigarette on the end of another, but otherwise appeared as indifferent as a graven image. Increasingly Furniss kept his eye to the keyhole. Suddenly a jerk of his arm brought the others to attention. Good emptied his pipe and took up his position by the other door. The photographer crushed out his cigarette on his heel and examined, for the hundredth time, the mechanism of his flash pistol.