While we waited around the corner in Great Portland Street, one of Pickering’s men approached and rang the bell, but though he repeated the summons several times, there was no response. Then, with easy agility, he climbed over the railings and disappeared into the area.
Leaving the second man to give us warning if we were noticed, Pickering and myself sauntered along to the house.
It was nearly eleven o’clock, and there were few passers-by, yet we did not wish to be discovered, for our investigations were to be made strictly in secret, prior to the police taking action.
Was I acting judiciously, I wondered? Would the revelation I had made reflect upon Sybil herself? Would those men who used that house hurl against her a terrible and relentless vendetta?
Whether wisely or unwisely, however, I had instituted the inquiry, and could not now draw back.
The inspector himself took the small bag containing a serviceable-looking housebreaker’s jemmy and other tools, and as we came to the area handed it down to the man below. Then both of us scrambled over the locked gate and descended the steps to the basement door by which it had been decided to enter.
The plain-clothes man was something of a mechanic, I could see, for he was soon at work upon the lock, yet although he tried for a full quarter of an hour to open the door, it resisted all his efforts.
“It’s bolted,” he declared at last, wiping the perspiration from his brow. “We must try the front door. That’s no doubt only on the latch. If we force this they’ll know we’ve been here, while if we force the latch we can put that right again before we leave.”
“Very well, Edwards,” was the inspector’s reply. “Go up alone and do it. It won’t do for us both to be up with you. Force the latch, and let us trust to luck to be able to put it right again. We’ll have to lay a trap here—of that I feel sure.”
The man ascended to the door above us, but scarcely had he done so when we heard the hoarse cry of “Star—extrar spe-shall!” from the further end of the street—the pre-arranged signal warning us of someone approaching.