The whole place was ghostly, full of shadows, shivery with
possibilities. It was Mr. Harbison finally who took Jim's candle and
crawled through the aperture. We waited in dead silence, listening to
his feet crunching over the coal beyond, watching the faint yellow light
that came through the ragged opening in the wall. Then he came back and
called through to us.
"Place is locked, over here," he said. "Heavy oak door at the head of
the steps. Whoever made that opening has done a prodigious amount of
labor for nothing."
The weapon, a crowbar, lay on the ground beside the bricks, and he
picked it up and balanced it on his hand. Dallas' florid face was almost
comical in his bewilderment; as for Jimmy--he slammed a piece of slag at
the furnace and walked away. At the door he turned around.
"Why don't you accuse me of it?" he asked bitterly. "Maybe you could
find a lump of coal in my pockets if you searched me."
He stalked up the stairs then and left us. Dallas and I went up
together, but we did not talk. There seemed to be nothing to say. Not
until I had closed and locked the door of my room did I venture to look
at something that I carried in the palm of my hand. It was a watch, not
running--a gentleman's flat gold watch, and it had been hanging by its
fob to a nail in the bricks beside the aperture.
In the back of the watch were the initials, T.H.H. and the picture of a
girl, cut from a newspaper.
It was my picture.