“He wouldn’t do anything until he had had something to eat. We went into the dining-room. Depressed sleuths were at tea. My ‘cousin’ was the same as usual, making a gesture do for a word.
“‘That was a bad show on Sunday,’ I said. ‘What are all the fellows in here going to do?’
“‘They’ll stay here a bit until we’re re-sorted.’
“‘I suppose most of them are known to the opposition show now?’
“He nodded. ‘Several of the chaps were getting warning letters before the Sunday show took place. We’ll have to shift ourselves about a bit.’
“‘Very busy?’
“‘Going all day. We’ve got two or three big fish in the net lately.’
“Presently, we left the depressed sleuths at tea, passed the out-of-work sleuths at the bar, and pushed a way down the stairs, which were full of men going up and down. It was pitch dark outside.
“The last thing my ‘cousin’ did, as we stepped into the dark, was to raise his eyebrows for me to follow. He stalked like a great cat down an alley, which is one of the ways to the Castle. There were sundry loafers in the lane, of course. Two policemen, who touched their hats to us, let us through the gate.
“It was too dark to see anything. We seemed to be crossing a great yard. We skirted the lower edge of this, and the ghost of a charming chapel moved past us, as foggy land goes past a steamer. We stalked along a line of dreary buildings into a doorway among many other doorways, and up a dirty wooden stairway. There were landings, and doors which had not seen paint for years, and on the door was the word ‘Intelligence.’ We mounted turn after turn, and came presently to a shabby room with packing cases and odds and ends of ammunition in it and nothing else. With a lift of his eyebrows and a wave of his hand, my ‘cousin’ went off on his toes, and I sat on a packing case cooling my heels. The electric light burned through a smeary globe, there was nothing to look at—odds and ends of uniform, odds and ends of ammunition. Outside the windows the dark was curling like a fog, and there were occasional shouts from the yard. I waited a full ten minutes, tapping my heels and feeling wonderfully safe.