re frankly criminals.
This is our home. It should have some effect in impressing you with the
power and resource at our command, and also with the class of men with
whom you are dealing. There is not one among us whose education is not
fully equal to your own; not one, indeed, but who is chosen, granting
first his criminal tendencies, because he is a specialist in his own
particular field--in commerce, in the government diplomatic service, in
the professions of law and medicine, in the ranks of pure science.
We are bordering on the fantastical, are we not? Dreaming, you will
probably say, of the Utopian in crime organisation. Quite so, Mr. Dale.
I only ask you to consider the POSSIBILITIES if what I say is true. Now
let us proceed. I am going to take you into three rooms--the three whose
doors you see ahead of you. You will notice that, including the one you
have just left, there are four on this corridor. I do not wish to strain
your credulity, or play tricks upon you; so I am going to ask you to fix
an approximate idea of the length of the corridor in your mind, as it
will perhaps enable you to account more readily for what may appear to
be a discrepancy in the corresponding size of the rooms."

One of the men opened the door ahead. Jimmie Dale, at a sign from his
conductor, moved forward and entered. Just what he had expected to find
he could not have told; his brain was whirling, partly from his aching
head, partly from his desperate effort to conceive some way of escape
from the peril which, for all his nonchalance, he knew only too well
was the gravest he had ever faced; but what he saw was simply a cozily
furnished bedroom. There was nothing peculiar about it; nothing out of
the way, except perhaps that it was rather narrow.

And then suddenly, rubbing his eyes involuntarily, he was staring in a
dazed way before him. The whole right-hand side of the wall was sinking
without a sound into the floor, increasing the width of the room by some
five or six feet--and in this space was disclosed what appeared to be a
sort of chemical laboratory, elaborately equipped, extending the entire
length of the room.

"The wall is purely a matter of mechanical construction, operated
hydraulically." The man was speaking softly at Jimmie Dale's side.
"The room beneath is built to correspond; the base, ceiling, and wall
mouldings here do not have to be very ingenious to effect a disguise.
I might say, however, that few visitors, oth