In a rushing spate of words he told us that they had as good as tortured him to glean the facts about myself and my connection with the Secret Service. But there was little that he did know and he had not told that. However, he had been locked up ever since they took him, and he had seen no one of our friends in the place. He was painfully apologetic about Natalie, but I deferred that explanation until our work was over. And with Larry in our wake we took up our search again. I had a warm glow in my heart, though, to find that nothing had happened to the beggar, for I was fonder of Larry than I had realized until after his capture. At the end of the original corridor we found a heavy door, and beneath the edge of it a steady light was shining. We came upon it suddenly, as the corridor took a sharp turn at this point. When the Chief saw the light he held us back by putting out his arms. One of the men flashed his torch on to the lock, and we saw that the key was in the door and on our side. But the sight of the light made us hesitate for a moment. Then, suddenly, I leaned over to the Chief and whispered in his ear. “Chief, this must be just about over the room of the voices. We turned to the left once, you know, and then to the right again. And we’ve gone just about that far.” “By Jove, you’re right,” the Chief whispered back. “Well, here goes, anyway!” And he stepped forward, tried the handle gently and then abruptly flung open the door. Our eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and the bright light revealed by the open door blinded us for a moment. But as we grew accustomed to the glare we realized that we were staring into a regular laboratory. Glass jars, retorts, burners, queer-looking glass vessels and huge metal tanks something like those used for compressed air lined the walls on all four sides. And there were other types of apparatus with which I was totally unfamiliar. But we had no time and no inclination for studying the inert contents of the room. For in the center of the floor stood a figure, impassively facing us, that struck a distinct chill to my heart at least. And by the way the others stopped in their tracks, I imagine they felt the same. It was the figure of a man, tightly bandaged from neck to foot in black silk, so that only the face showed. But such a face! Without the eyes, the thin, pallid countenance, hairless and deeply lined, seemed to express an abysmal melancholy, but a melancholy that held no human warmth. The mouth was thin and wide, the nose high arched and almost hooked, and the cheekbones unusually high. The face shadowed forth, to me at least, standing, staring in the doorway, inhuman composure, inhuman cruelty out of sheer indifference rather than sensuality, and an inhuman weariness.