It was ten o'clock when Randall Clayton, pacing up and down the street, nervously eying the darkened front door of 192 Layte Street, saw a lad nimbly dart up the front steps, touch a bell-push, and then vanish in a few moments, as the door closed. Ciayton could only distinguish vaguely the bundles with which the boy had been loaded down. He lingered there in agony, afraid to approach that portal.
But, a half-hour later, a portly man, in a light-colored coat, with easy leisure, strolling up the steps, inserted a latch-key, and the baffled lover could only see that the hallway was dark, with one half-turned-up gas jet.
Clayton cautiously explored the rear of the house, finding an alleyway suitable for unloading the bulky wares of the "Valkyrie" saloon.
A broad flight of steps led down to the cellarway of the "Valkyrie," and a similar one to the basement of the old mansion.
"The basement is used for business storage, evidently," mused the puzzled Clayton; but even with his brief experience of the night before, he could tell that the great rear drawing-room and library were the rooms into which he had borne the senseless form of the woman he madly loved. Through a chink of the enamelled white shutters a faint pencil of light shone out in the gloomy darkness.
"Good God!" he groaned, "I would give my life to be within that room." For his heart told him that Irma Gluyas lay helpless within there, and he only wandered away at midnight, when a stray policeman suspiciously eyed him lingering in the alley.
"Einstein is my only hope," he despairingly cried, as he wandered back to the bridge and sought his lonely rooms. The silky-gray dawn found him still dressed, lying on a chair, with his eyes fixed upon the picture, the first sight of which had been the beginning of his fevered dream.
And then, suddenly recalling himself, he put out the flaring lights, bathed his throbbing temples, and went out to seek an early-opening coffee-shop. "I must be myself to-day," he muttered, after the drowsy waiter had forced some breakfast upon him.
"For the three-days' holiday begins at noon, and I shall be free then. I must do my bank business alone, and keep Einstein on the watch."
By sheer force of habit, he had opened the damp morning—paper thrust upon the swell customer.