We stood there without moving. Then the figure at my side seemed stung into sudden madness. Without a word of warning or explanation, my companion clucked down and went dodging in and out between the huddled clumps of barrels, threading a circuitous path toward the slip edge. I saw him drop down on all fours and peer over the string-piece. Then I saw him draw back, rise to his feet, and run northward toward the pier door where the two watchmen stood. What he said to those watchmen I had no means of knowing. One of them, however, swung about and tattooed on the door with a night-stick before Creegan could catch at his arm and stop him. Before I could join them, some one from within had thrown open the door. I saw Creegan and the first man dive into the chill-aired, high-vaulted building, with its exotic odors of spice and coffee and mysterious tropical bales. I heard somebody call out to turn on the lights, and then Creegan's disgustedly warning voice call back for him to shut up. Then somewhere in the gloom inside a further colloquy took place, a tangle of voices, a call for quietness, followed by a sibilant hiss of caution. Creegan appeared in the doorway again. I could see that he was motioning for me. "Come on," he whispered. And I tiptoed in after him, under that echoing vaulted roof where the outline of a wheeled gangway looked oddly like the skeleton of some great dinosaur, and the pungent spicy odors took me at one breath two thousand miles southward into the Tropics. "Take off those shoes," quietly commanded Creegan. And I dropped beside him on the bare pier planks and slipped my feet out of Shimmey's ungainly toed shoes. A man moved aside from a door as we stepped silently up to it. Creegan turned to whisper a word or two in his ear. Then he opened the door and led me by the sleeve into the utter darkness within, closing and locking the door after him. I was startled by the sudden contact of Creegan's groping fingers. I realized that he was thrusting a short cylindrical object up against my body. "Take this," he whispered. "What is it?" I demanded in an answering whisper. "It's a flashlight. Press here--see! And throw it on when I say so!" I took the flashlight, pressed as he told me, and saw a feeble glow of light from its glass-globed end. About this end he had swathed a cotton pocket handkerchief. More actual illumination would have come from a tallow candle. But it seemed sufficient for Creegan's purpose. I could see him peer about, step across to a pile of stout wooden boxes, count them, test one as to its weight, squint once more searchingly about the room, and then drop full length on the plank flooring and press his ear to the wood.