Page:Weird Tales v01n01 (1923-03).djvu/89

88 did get into the lumber-room easily enough from the corridor—the door's not even locked, as you know, sir. And that's how we got into the private office—from the lumber-room, here, through the door between."

"But how—?" began Quarrier. "That door is a steel one; it was locked—I'll swear to that. You didn't jimmy it; you didn't have a Fourth Dimension handy, did you, Harrison? But—go on; it's beyond me, I'll confess.

Harrison permitted himself the ghost of a grin.

"Why—just a newspaper and a bit of wire, sir—that was how it was done. I didn't dare unlock the connecting door—beforehand, sir—from the office side; I never had the chance. I was never alone in the office, sir, even for a second, as you know; but there's a clearance of nearly half an inch, sir, beneath that connecting door—just enough for the newspaper. From the lumber-room here I pushed the paper under the door, into the office, and then, with the wire, it wasn't so difficult to push the key out of the lock; the door was locked from the office side, of course.

"The key fell on the paper; we pulled the paper with the key on it back under the door, sir, into the lumber-room here, and—we just unlocked the connecting door there, and walked into the office. Afterwards I locked the door again, from the office side, and I just did make it out the front door of the office, when I heard your step on the stair. He was waiting for me in the lumber-room; he said it was safer. Anyway, I just did make it along the hall and into the lumber-room by the hall entrance before you came."

He paused, a queer expression in his face.

"But I don't understand how you knew, if you'll excuse me, sir—how you suspected. Afterward, from the corridor, you saw our light when we were ready to come out; we thought you'd gone for good, of course But nothing was touched, sir, except—that is—of course—" He stumbled.

Quarrier silenced him with upraised hand.

"I didn't suspect, Harrison—I knew," he said. "And I heard, through the keyhole of that connecting door, the ticking of that watch of yours; it's big enough. That helped of course. But that was afterward. There was one little thing you overlooked, and, for the matter of that, so did I—nearly."

There came the sound of heavy footsteps on the concrete flooring of the corridor, voices: His guards, summoned by Quarrier's "light-bombs."

Quarrier continued, as if he had not heard:

"Well—it was right under my eyes but I almost missed it, at that. I saw it moving, and I knew that something must have made it move."

He paused, with a faint grimace of recollection.

"You see—you had your hat on in the office, didn't you? Yes, I thought so. You're a bit deaf, too Well, you should have been—to Marston. But that's past. And you have a good, thick crop of hair—so far."

Quarrier smiled frostily. "Well, you struck against it and set it moving—that was all. You never noticed it. Because it was—the chain from the electrolier, Harrison, and that was how—"

"You caught us, sir! I—I'm glad. You might call it a—"

"—Chain of circumstance," finished Quarrier, his eyes outward, gazing into the new dawn.