"No, I can't get anything!" said the white-faced Criswell. And I could see that he had honestly tried, that he had strained his very soul, striving to reach up to the light that was denied him. But the matter was not one of mere volition. It was beyond his power. It depended on something external, on something as much outside his conscious control as though it were an angel that must come and touch him on the brow. It was simply that the door of Memory remained locked and barred. We had not hit upon the right combination. But I did not give up. "Now we're going in to try Lockwood's own office," I told him, with a peremptoriness which made him draw away from me. "I--I don't think I can go through it again," he faltered. And I could see the lines of mental fatigue deepen on his ashen face. Yet I proffered him no sympathy; I allowed him no escape from those four imprisoning walls. I had already stirred the pool too deeply. I knew that a relapse into the old impassive hopelessness would now be doubly perilous. I looked about the room. Three sides of it were lined with book-shelves and every shelf was filled with hundreds of books, thousands of them altogether, from dull and uninteresting-looking treatises on railway building and mining engineering to even more dull-looking consular reports and text-books on matters of finance. The fourth side of the room held two windows. Between these windows, some six feet from the wall, stood Lockwood's rosewood desk. It was a handsome desk, heavily carved, yet like the rest of the furniture, the acme of simplicity. History, I knew, had been made over that oblong of rosewood. It had been and would again be an arena of Napoleonic contention. Yet it stood before me as bare and bald as a prize fighter's platform. I sat down in the carved swivel chair beside this desk, drew my chair closer to the rosewood, and looked up at Criswell, who, I believe, would have turned and bolted, had he been given the chance. He was, I fancy, even beginning to have suspicions as to my sanity. But in that I saw no objection. It was, I felt, rather an advantage. It would serve to key his nerves up to a still higher pitch--for I still hoped against hope that I might lash him into some form of mental calenture which would drive him into taking the high jump, which would in some way make him clear the blind wall. "Now, I'm Lockwood, remember," I cried, fixing my eye on him, "and you're Criswell, my private secretary. Have you got that plain?" He did not answer me. He was, apparently, looking weakly about for a place to sit down. "Have you got that plain?" I repeated, this time in a voice that was almost thunderous. "Yes," he finally said. "I understand."