Ten minutes later the third door was forced, and Inspector Finney found himself in a rectangular saloon curiously appointed but showing evidence of long neglect. The place, now, smelled like an iron foundry.
“This looks like an old dope joint to me,” said one of the party, “but it’s plain it hasn’t been used for a long while.”
“Strip all the walls,” Finney ordered; “we’re not through yet.”
A scene of whole-hearted wrecking followed upon which the Fire Department could not have improved. Nevertheless, nearly an hour had elapsed before a cunningly hidden fourth door was discovered.
“Go to work, boys,” said Finney.
The sweating workers got busy, bringing down the blowpipe and rigging it for further operations. Finney stared spec-ulatively at a patch of scarred wall. He did not know, indeed never learned, that beyond that very piece of wall upon which his gaze was fixed a spiral staircase led from a point below to the top floor of Wu King’s building. Since only by measurements and never by sounding could the shaft in which it ran be discovered, it was not unnatural that Inspector Finney should concentrate the whole of his attention upon the fourth iron door recently discovered.
These iron doors made him savage. At the present moment he was recalling a recent conversation with the government agent Hepburn; he remembered boasting that no such door could be fitted in the Chinatown area without his becoming aware of the fact. It was a bitter pill, for here were four!
He reflected with satisfaction, however, that no man knows everything. At least he could congratulate himself upon the finding of this secret staircase. Between the eastern end of Wu King’s premises and the western end of that adjoining, measurements had shown a space unaccounted for. Operating from inside Wu King’s, floor boards had been torn up and a thick party wall brought to light. Through this Finney had caused a way to be broken; and they had found themselves on the first stair below street level.
That was good work! He resettled his hard hat upon his hard head and lighted a cigarette. . . .
Nevertheless, from the time that operations had commenced in early morning, up to the moment when the fourth door succumbed, many weary hours of toil had been spent by the party under Inspector Finney. He was up on the street wondering what all this secret subterranean building really meant when:
“We’re through!” came a cry, hollow, from the acrid depths.
A minute later he stood on the lowest step, directing the ray of his torch upon oily, dirty-looking water.
“I guess that’s tidal level,” a voice said, “but sometimes these steps went deeper.”
Inspector Finney flashed his light across the unwholesome-looking waters of the well. At the further end he saw a square opening two to three feet above the surface.
“There is or was another iron door,” he growled, “but it’s open. I wonder what’s on the other side.”
He was short and stocky himself. He turned to one of the men who had been working on the forcing of the doors.
“What’s your height, Ruskin?” he asked.
“Six one-and-a-quarter, Inspector.”
“You swim well, don’t you?”
“Not so bad.”
“If the stone steps carry on down below water level,” Finney explained, “you won’t have to swim. I figure you could keep your feet, hold a torch above your head and see what’s beyond there. What do you say?”
“I’ll try it.”
Ruskin partly stripped for the endeavour and then, torch held in his right hand, he began, feeling his way with care, to descend the stone steps. The water, on top of which all sorts of fragments floated, ws just up to Ruskin’s shoulders when he announced:
“I’m on the level now.”
“Go easy,” Finney warned. “If you loose foothold strike up to the surface and swim back.”
Ruskin did not reply: he walked on, the torch held above his head. He passed under the square opening and stood there for a moment, then:
“Good God!” he screamed.
His torch disappeared—he had dropped it. There was a wild splashing and churning. Finney cast hat and coat aside and went plunging down the steps, another man behind him.
“Show those lights!” he shouted to the men who still remained upon the landing.
In the rays of the torches Ruskin’s face showed above the surface. Finney grabbed him, and presently he was hauled up the steps. He lay there pointing down, shaking and gasping. . . .
“There’s a great wide space of water back there,” he panted—”and there’s some awful thing lives in it—a monster! I saw its eyes shining!”
The temple of the seven-eyed goddess had been flooded by Sam Pak, but the head of its presiding deity remained just above the surface. . . .
Chapter 33
THE BALCONY
Mr. Schmidt, representing the Stratton Estates, stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Stratton Building. Two men followed. One, wearing overalls and having a leather bag carried on a strap across his left shoulder, represented Midtown Electric. Mr. Schmidt recognized him as one of the pair who had been on the job before. The other, a tall, lean man wearing glasses and a brusque military moustache, came from the Falcon Imperial Insurance Corporation, which carried the fire risk of the Stratton Building.
A man in the uniform of the Fire Department, who was seated on a chair before a green baize-covered door, stood up as the party came out of the elevator.
It was really unnecessary, Mr. Englebert,” said Schmidt, addressing the grey-moustached man, “to notify the Fire Department. The door which you see was formerly boarded up so that no door showed. The Fire Department has stripped it, in accordance, I suppose, with your instructions, and has seen fit to post a guard over it throughout the whole of the day. Quite unnecessary!”
Mr. Englebert nodded.
“My directors carry a heavy responsibility on this building, Mr. Schmidt,” he replied, “and in view of the phenomenal electric storms recently experienced in the Midwest, we must assure ourselves of the efficiency of the lightning conductors.”
“That’s all agreed, Mr. Englebert. I have the keys of the staircase to the flagstaff, but you must have put us to quite some trouble.”
Few of the hundreds of windows in the great building showed any light. The office workers engaged by firms occupying premises in the Stratton Building had departed for home. Only a few late toilers remained at their desks. In the three streets which embayed the tall structure, there was nothing to indicate that a cordon had been thrown around the building. Mr. Schmidt himself, who, indeed, was perfectly innocent of any complicity apart from the duties which he owed to the League of Good Americans, remained to this moment unaware of the fact that an office opening on the top floor, the staff of which had left at six o’clock, was now packed with police.
“All clear, sir,” said the fireman.
Mr. Schmidt produced a bunch of keys, fumbled for a while, finally selected one, and not without difficulty opened the baize-covered door. He turned.
“I may say here and now,” he remarked, “that I have never been in the dome: I have never known it to be opened during the time I have acted for the Stratton Estates. There are rooms up there, I know, which were formally occupied by the late Mr. Jerome Stratton. . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, he was very eccentric. As there was no proper means of escape in the event of fire, they were closed some years ago. I’ll lead the way. I have a torch. There are no lights.”
He went in, shining the ray of his torch ahead. The man from Midtown Electric followed. Mr. Englebert paused at the threshold; and to the fireman:
“You have your orders,” he snapped.
“Sure.”
Nayland Smith, his facial disguise that which he employed for the Salvation Army officer, his dress that of a business man, followed Mark Hepburn—representing Midtown Electric—into the darkness illuminated only by Mr. Schmidt’s torch. Hepburn supplemented it by the light of another.