"About ten minutes."
"And then they came out?"
Tester nodded.
"Did they bring anything out with them?"
"Nothing," said Mr. Tester emphatically.
"Did this fellow--what's his name?--look surprised or upset?" persisted
the cross-examining Honest John.
"He was a bit upset, now you come to mention it, agitated like, yes,"
said Tester, reviewing the circumstances in a new light. "His 'and
was, so to speak, shaking."
"Merciful Moses!" This pious ejaculation was from Mr. Staines. "He
took away the key, you say. And what are you supposed to be here for?"
asked Mr. Staines violently. "You allow this fellow to come and take
our property away. Where is the place?"
Tester led the way across the littered yard, explaining en route that
he was fed up, and why he was fed up, and what they could do to fill
the vacancy which would undoubtedly occur the next day, and where they
could go to, so far as he was concerned, and so, unlocking one rusty
lock after another, passed through dark and desolate offices, full of
squeaks and scampers, down a short flight of stone steps to a most
uncompromising steel door at which they could only gaze.
III
Bones was at his office early the following rooming, but he was not
earlier than Mr. Staines, who literally followed him into his office
and slammed down a slip of paper under his astonished and gloomy eye.
"Hey, hey, what's this?" said Bones irritably. "What the dooce is
this, my wicked old fiddle fellow?"
"Your cheque," said Mr. Staines firmly. "And I'll trouble you for the
key of our strong-room."
"The key of your strong-room?" repeated Bones. "Didn't I buy this
property?"
"You did and you didn't. To cut a long story short, Mr. Tibbetts, I
have decided not to sell--in fact, I find that I have done an illegal
thing in selling at all."
Bones shrugged his shoulders. Remember that he had slept, or
half-slept, for some nine hours, and possibly his views had undergone a
change. What he would have done is problematical, because at that
moment the radiant Miss Whitland passed into her office, and Bones's
acute ear heard the snap of her door.
"One moment," he said gruffly, "one moment, old Honesty."
He strode through the door which separated the private from the public
portion of his suite, and Mr. Staines listened. He listened at varying
distances from the door, and in his last position it would have
required the most delicate of scientific instruments to measure the
distance between his ear and the keyhole. He heard nothing save the
wail of a Bones distraught, and the firm "No's" of a self-possessed
female.