Lazard deftly charged the weapon with three small needles, which he took from a little gold ornament on his watch-fob. The needles were extremely thin, and about three-quarters of an inch long. They were wet when he lifted them from the little trinket, and he exercised scrupulous care in the way he handled them. He did not touch them with his fingers, but fed them into the tube with a pair of tweezers.
Then he fitted a rubber shield over the trigger and slipped it back into his pocket.
The cab was already half-way up Kingsway. He carefully wiped the gold trinket on a piece of cotton-wool, and burned the wool on the floor of the cab. It burned with a bright blue flame that flared up instantly, burned fiercely for a second, and as quickly died.
He tapped the window, and the cab pulled in to the kerb.
"I don't exactly know where Denburh House is, sir," said the driver apologetically.
"All right; you've passed it. I'll walk back," said the Count, and paid him off.
He bought another paper and glanced at the "Stop Press."
The sole item in it- even New York cotton prices had had to give way to the Hendon murder mystery- was set out in thick type, and stated that one of Dain's motor-cars had been found derelict and untended outside the doors of one of the great London stores, where it had apparently been left all day.
He walked leisurely up the wide pavement, got to the top, and began walking down on the other side. He himself had no more idea of the exact location Denbugh House than had the taxi-driver. But he soon found it, a faint building in the modern style, housing a whole army of business offices beneath its capacious roof.
Lazard paused before he reached the door and looked up at the vast frontage. A few lighted windows showed, three on the second floor and two on the third. But there was not a spark of Light to break the gloom high up there on the top floor under the eaves. He gauged the position of the lighted offices on the second floor from their proportionate distances from the lift-shaft. And as he entered the door he rapidly canned the great rows of brass name-plates on the walls just inside.
Ah! There was a likely one; the Denbugh Rehearsal Rooms. That was the one that was probably still occupied up there now. He needed a bluff for that liftman, who, if tragedy occurred up in the twilit gloom of that laboratory, would remember him with unfailing exactitude. But what was more natural than a man going up there to attend a rehearsal that was already in full swing? It would be immeasurably safer to do that than to take a the lift to the top floor, or to mention the name of an office that had been locked up and deserted hours ago. And he had to get by that liftman.
He strolled in and entered the lift.
"Second floor, please," he murmured.
"Rehearsal Rooms, sir?" asked the attendant, closing the door.
"If you please."
"You're late, sir; they'll be finishing at ten."
"Yes, quite. I'm not rehearsing tonight. I'm escorting a lady home."
The lift stopped.
"Second on the left, sir," said the attendant, sliding the door open.
Lazard nodded as he stepped out. "Yes, I know," he said smoothly, and walked down the corridor.
He heard the lift gate slam behind him, and the lift slid down again.
Lazard waited for two seconds, and then hurried noiselessly back to the lift-shaft, the stairs built all round it, breaking out into landings at every floor. Lazard ran up them two at a time. When he got to the fourth floor he heard the lift ascending again, and he bolted down a side corridor into the darkness.
He waited on in the black silence. Somewhere upstairs the handle of a pail clanged loudly where a cleaner was busy about his nightly duties. The lift stopped at the third floor, and Lazard slipped back to the stairs and recommenced his ascent. He passed the fifth in safety. On the sixth he caught a momentary back view of the cleaner on his hands and knees wiping over the wide stone floor with a flannel by the light of a single lamp at the end of the corridor.
The next was the last. He reached the top, breathing gently through his nose. On his immediate right was a small row of painted names, indistinct in the pitchy darkness. He switched on his torch and played it swiftly over them. The third one down bore the neat legend: "Landring Dent, Export Merchant, Room 6," and a painted arrow pointed the direction.
It was a narrow passage, devoid of all ornamentation, mean compared with the ostentatious show of the more expensive floors below. He crawled stealthily along and listened cautiously at each door. All was silent as the tomb. He waited till his breathing was normal again, and then directed the beam of his torch down the passage. It flickered over the numbers, a thin pencil of light that licked into the stygian gloom like the ray of a miniature searchlight.
He found Dent's right at the very end, an unpretentious looking apartment, with a plain painted door. There were two glass panels in it, but they had been felted over from the inside. A little strip of wood, let into a slot, informed him that Mr. Landring Dent was "Out."
He leaned back against the wall and took stock of his surroundings. The passage was a cul-de-sac, with the entrance to Dent's office at the far end of it. The only way of escape lay back along the way he had come. He sent a ray of light stabbing up at the ceiling. And a thin smile creased the corners of his mouth.
Immediately outside the door of No. 6 was a square black opening in the uniform white of the ceiling. It was the fire escape, the emergency exit to the roof.