A sort of up-to-date game of holdup! The penalty of being a wealthy man! If you had named your figure to begin with, we would have saved a lot of idle talk, and you would have had my answer the sooner: NOTHING!""Do you know," said the other, in a grimly musing way, "there has always been one man, but only one until now, that I have wished Imight add to my present associates.I refer to the so-called Gray Seal.To-night there are two.I pay you the compliment of being the other.But"--he was smiling ominously again--"we are wasting time, Mr.Dale.I am willing to expose my hand to the extent of admitting that the information you are withholding is infinitely more valuable to me than the mere wreaking of reprisal upon you for a refusal to talk.Therefore, if you will answer, I pledge you my word you will be free to leave here within five minutes.If you refuse, you are already aware of the alternative.Well, Mr.Dale?"Who was this man? Jimmie Dale was studying the other's chin, the lips, the white, even teeth, the jet-black hair.Some day the tables might be turned.Could he recognise again this cool, imperturbable ruffian who so callously threatened him with murder?
"Well, Mr.Dale? I am waiting!"
"I am not a magician," said Jimmie Dale contemptuously."I could not answer your questions if I wanted to."The other's hand slid instantly to a row of electric buttons on the desk.
"Very well, Mr.Dale!" he said quietly."You do not believe, I see, that I would dare to carry my threat into execution; you perhaps even doubt my power.I shall take the trouble to convince you--Iimagine it will stimulate your memory."
The door opened.Two men were standing on the threshold, both in evening dress, both masked.The man behind the desk came forward, took Jimmie Dale's arm almost courteously, and led him from the room out into a corridor, where he halted abruptly.
"I want to call your attention first, Mr.Dale, to the fact that as far as you are concerned you neither have now, nor ever will have, any idea whether you are in the heart of New York or fifty miles away from it.Now, listen! Do you hear anything?"There was nothing.Only the strange silence of that other room was intensified now.There was not a sound; stillness such as it seemed to Jimmie Dale he had never experienced before was around him.
"You may possibly infer from the silence that you are NOT in the city," suggested the other, after a moment's pause."I leave you to your own conclusions in that respect.The cause, however, of the silence is internal, not external; we had sound-proof principles in mind to a perhaps exaggerated degree when this building was constructed.If you care to do so, you have my permission to shout, say, for help, to your heart's content.We shall make no effort to stop you."Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders.He was staring down a brilliantly lighted, richly carpeted corridor.There were doors on one side, windows on the other, the windows all hung with heavy, closely drawn portieres.The corridor was certainly not on the ground floor, but whether it was on the second or third, or even above that again, he had no means of knowing.From appearances, though, the place seemed more like a large, private mansion than anything else.
"Just one word more before we proceed," continued the other."I do not wish you to labour under any illusion.Here we are frankly criminals.This is our home.It should have some effect in impressing you with the power and resource at our command, and also with the class of men with whom you are dealing.There is not one among us whose education is not fully equal to your own; not one, indeed, but who is chosen, granting first his criminal tendencies, because he is a specialist in his own particular field--in commerce, in the government diplomatic service, in the professions of law and medicine, in the ranks of pure science.We are bordering on the fantastical, are we not? Dreaming, you will probably say, of the Utopian in crime organisation.Quite so, Mr.Dale.I only ask you to consider the POSSIBILITIES if what I say is true.Now let us proceed.I am going to take you into three rooms--the three whose doors you see ahead of you.You will notice that, including the one you have just left, there are four on this corridor.I do not wish to strain your credulity, or play tricks upon you; so I am going to ask you to fix an approximate idea of the length of the corridor in your mind, as it will perhaps enable you to account more readily for what may appear to be a discrepancy in the corresponding size of the rooms."One of the men opened the door ahead.Jimmie Dale, at a sign from his conductor, moved forward and entered.Just what he had expected to find he could not have told; his brain was whirling, partly from his aching head, partly from his desperate effort to conceive some way of escape from the peril which, for all his nonchalance, he knew only too well was the gravest he had ever faced; but what he saw was simply a cozily furnished bedroom.There was nothing peculiar about it; nothing out of the way, except perhaps that it was rather narrow.