Garth drew up a table, climbed upon it, and examined the thick screws which held the contrivance in place. With his screwdriver he commenced noiselessly to remove one of these. He thought it likely that the screw hole would go all the way through. If it did not, his auger would complete the journey. He instructed the girl to draw the blinds and close the door so that the room would be darker. He pulled the screw from the rotten wall. The aperture was sufficiently large. It admitted the repellent odor he had noticed in the shop; so he put his eye to the hole and waited for his brain to accustom itself to these new conditions.
The drone of voices reached him, but at first he could see very little—shadowy outlines circling a dull, glowing thing close to the floor—a brazier, he decided, about which men sat. Then he started, for he thought he saw something long and white, like a woman. But the smoke from the aperture hurt his eye. He had to close it. When he opened it again there was nothing white, but out of the droning voices came words in English with a foreign accent, and he crouched against the wall, listening.
He marveled that he should hear just these words at this particular moment.
"The police are suspicious," he heard, "so it's been put ahead. At nine o'clock to-night. Two raps on the west door at Alsop's. The veiled woman will open the door and take the bomb, and then, by God, we'll show them!"
A sibilant demand for caution reached Garth. The droning recommenced. Garth fancied that it continued in the guttural accents of some eastern dialect.
He replaced the screw. He got down from the table, able to plan definitely. Against her protests, he took the girl to headquarters and warned the matron to let her communicate with no one before nine-thirty. He hurried to the flat then, and told the inspector and Nora of Brown's death and of his experience at the shop.
"That's where Brown was struck," he ended, "and Brown was right. They are after Alsop and his crowd to-night with dynamite, and the veiled woman's the figure of chief danger. Do you know, chief, I'm going to let them hand her that bomb, then I'll try to handle her."
The inspector shook his head.
"It's taking too big chances to let them get as far as the house with the thing."
"It's the veiled woman I'm thinking of," Garth answered. "Grab these people before her share commences, and you'll probably never see her. She'll bob up here and there, causing infinite trouble, because everything she does has the marks of a fiendish cleverness. Let me take the risk and land her."