His usually good-humoured face was a little clouded.
"Professor," he began--"What's that, Miles?"
A plain-clothes man from the street had come hurrying into the room.
"Say, Mr. French," he reported, "our fellows have got hold of a newsie
down in the street, who was coming along way round the back and saw two
men enter this house by the side entrance, half-an-hour ago. One he
described exactly as the Professor here. The other, without a doubt, was
Quest."
French turned swiftly towards the Professor.
"You hear what this man says?" he exclaimed. "Mr. Ashleigh, you're fooling
me! You entered this house with Sanford Quest. You must tell us where he
is hiding."
The Professor knocked the ash from his cigar and replaced it in his mouth.
His clasped hands rested in front of him. There was a twinkle of something
almost like mirth in his eyes as he glanced up at the Inspector.
"Mr. French," he said, "Mr. Sanford Quest is my friend. I am here in
charge of his house. Believing as I do that his arrest was an egregious
blunder, I shall say or do nothing likely to afford you any information."
French turned impatiently away. Suddenly a light broke in upon him, he
rushed towards the door.
"That damned Dutchie!" he exclaimed.
The Professor smiled benignly.
CHAPTER VII
THE UNSEEN TERROR
1.
With a little gesture of despair, Quest turned away from the instrument
which seemed suddenly to have become so terribly unresponsive, and looked
across the vista of square roofs and tangled masses of telephone wires to
where the lights of larger New York flared up against the sky.
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