And there was nothing until a good deal later, when they found that those old gas pipes had been extended into an unused basement room in the building to the left. When they entered this room, they found proof that recently it had been occupied; men had been doing things there with reference to the end of that extended gas pipe, but everybody had got away. I kept quiet, of course; the Sencort people hushed their clerks. Lord Strathon, for England, and M. Géroud, for France, met with Sencort and Teverson and made their agreements as everybody read. Nobody read of that near success at gassing them dead as those guinea pigs which had been penned on their table. Nobody knew, but the Sencort people and I and those who had slotted the pipes and killed the four guinea pigs from that next-door basement room. “Get out of New York, Steve! Stay away!” said another note to me in Jerry’s handwriting. It arrived the second day after the gassing of the guinea pigs and I was thinking it over, when walking on Park Avenue and, being far from my hotel, I gave in to a taxi driver who offered his cab at the curb. “Belmont!” I told him; and he started in the right direction; then he swung to the east and was over Third Avenue. He was up an alley while I was rapping at his window. I realized then and opened the door and jumped out while the cab was still moving; but I was near his destination. A gat was at my midriff before I’d stopped slipping in the muck underfoot; and as I looked into the faces of the gents surrounding me, I understood that, upon the rack of their club, my number to-day had arrived at the top. XIX I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM. They were not masked; it was daylight. The hour was late in the afternoon, to be sure; but I saw them plainly as they made no attempt at concealment. And I could guess at the significance of this. They showed themselves, without care, for they felt absolutely sure I would never have a chance to give evidence against them. I used to wonder why a man doesn’t put up a fight, in spite of having a gun shoved against him, when he knows he’s in for the worst possible after he surrenders to such a circle as met me. The fact is, at the moment, the gun at your belt is wholly convincing; you aren’t competent to imagine incidents subsequent to the occasion of its going off. So you don’t force the occasion. “Step in there,” somebody said to me; and I stepped. “There” was a door in the rear of a building; it led into an empty room and to another door indicated as my destination. Here was a closet without further portal and without window; its light came through the door by which I entered; and it was so dark that, when I was thrust in and the door slammed and bolted, I supposed myself alone.