There was only one answer to the question--to play the game
out to the end, whatever that end might be!
Beneath the mask his face drew into chiselled lines, as the picklock
silently locked the door. There was one exit from that inner room, and
only _one_--through the room in which he stood. The Tocsin had drawn an
accurate word-plan of the crude, shack-like place, and now in his mind
he reconstructed it here in the darkness. The doorway into a small hall
that led to the stairs adjoined the doorway of that inner room where
the two were now at work--and in that room were no windows, it was a
sort of blind cubby-hole where Niccolo Sonnino transacted his most
private business.
Jimmie Dale crept forward up the room. There was no answering creak of
board or flooring, no sound save that gnawing sound, and the rasping
click of the ratchet. His place of vantage was against the wall between
the two doors--there, be could both command the exit from, and see into,
the inner room, while the doorway into the hall provided him with a
means of retreat should the necessity arise. And then, suddenly,
halfway up the room, he dropped down behind what was evidently a
jeweller's workbench.
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