The vigil was fruitless, though.
No one entered the dark-room, barely visible in his quick glances.
A new idea came. He went up the rainspout of the adjoining roof, using knees for grip and hands to pull him up from one bracing ring to another. Down the adjoining fire escape he went, to the top floor of the candy factory where, to the surprised girls, he whispered, pretending to be mischievous, “Playing a trick on the folks next door.” They all knew him, from seeing him going to and from work. He accepted some candy, and went down and out onto the street.
He saw no one watching. The brown mark of the torpedo detonation was still on the pavement. He slipped into the laboratory cellar, by way of its ash-lift, unobserved as far as he could tell.
To the air-conditioning system he made his way, trying to see if any of its outlets, especially one to the dark-room section, had been removed or tampered with. He saw some signs that a pipe wrench had ground rough bright spots on the piping, and smiled. His idea had been right as to where the gas had been sent up. A survey among old trash awaiting the attention of Potts revealed a large, empty tank. Some one must have charged it—whether by purchasing the materials or by injecting the exhaust from a car he never found out.
There, though, was his evidence. He left it as it was.
Grover had been right.
Some person or group, with intentions far more vicious than had been in evidence among the Tibetans, had marked him. Why? What did he know? Not the place of the lost Eye of Om. For that they would want to take him prisoner, to question him. This attack had been because someone was sure that he knew more than he did.
Could he find out what he was supposed to know?
To try was Roger’s immediate intention.