"The place I've dreamed about," Ilingsworth thought to himself. For an instant he stood drinking in all of its details in some sort of gleeful ecstasy—the ecstasy of a man who feels the end of the journey near. And then, suddenly, he became all action. He stepped to the desk upon which stood a desk-telephone upon a standard, and a small mahogany tablet with two push-buttons on its surface.
"I can't understand why it's all so easy," he told himself; and the next moment he drew from his left coat-pocket a pair of wire-cutters, and with two sudden, jerky twists of his right wrist he clipped the flexible green-covered wires that connected the push-buttons and the telephone, and twisted the unconnected ends down and out of sight. It was his first advent in this house of Wilkinson, and yet he had rehearsed the scene in his waking hours and in his sleep so many, many times, that he did it without nervousness and without fear. So that he was not surprised to find himself more than practise-perfect. He glanced about the room for evidences of other wires, buttons, bells and speaking tubes, and then swooped down upon the door.
"If only it has a key!" he thought; and the next moment he almost cried out joyfully, for he found that it had not only a key, but that it might be bolted from the inside.
"And when it's bolted," he assured himself, "What sound can penetrate beyond its walls?"
Beyond its walls! The phrase, somehow, kept ringing in his ears; to him there was music in it. He never thought of the walls themselves; nor had he ever asked himself whether behind those rich and heavy hanging curtains there might not be other means of exit.
He took his place behind the open door.
"Now for the crisis," he said calmly to himself.
And plunging his hand once more into his coat-pocket he produced a gun—a modern, hammerless revolver that he had selected with considerable care, after consulting the advertisements in the magazines, and after reading the booklets of their makers. This gun he had selected, not only on account of its particular efficiency, but also because of its remarkably repulsive look. It bore the same formidable appearance compared with the large family of fire-arms as the bull-dog does to his canine race. It was a weapon of peculiarly terrifying appearance—and that was what he wanted. For the rest, it was a .32 calibre, and upon its handle it bore the maker's name and a number—a number that belonged to this particular weapon and to no other weapon of this make in the whole wide world.
Suddenly the sound of footsteps in the hall without reached his ears. Every nerve tingled with his purpose; every muscle became rigid and alert.
"Now!" he exclaimed.