he had run blindly into the very heart and centre of these hell
fiends' nest!

Silently he stood there, holding his breath as he listened now,
motionless as a statue, forcing his mind to THINK. He remembered that
last night his impression of the place had been that it was more like
some great private mansion than anything else. Well, he had been right,
it seemed! He could have laughed aloud--sardonically, hysterically. It
was not so strange now that there were no rooms on the right-hand side
of the corridor! And what could have suited their purpose better, what,
by its very location, its unimpeachable character, could be a more ideal
lair for them than this house! And how grimly simple it was now, the
explanation! In the five years that the false Henry LaSalle had been in
possession, they had cunningly remodelled the upper floor--that was all!
It was quite clear now why the man never entertained--why he had never
been caught or found or known to be in communication with his fellow
conspirators! It was no longer curious that one might watch the door of
the house for months at a stretch and go unrewarded for one's pains, as
the Tocsin had done, when access to the house by those who frequented it
was so easy through the garage on the side street--and from the garage,
if their work there was in keeping with their clever contrivances
within the house, by an underground connection into, say, the cellar or
basement!

Again Jimmie Dale checked that nervous, unnatural inclination to laugh
aloud. Was there anything, any single incident, any single detail of all
that had transpired, that was not explained, borne out, as it could be
explained and borne out in no other way save that the Crime Club should
be no other than this very house itself? It was the exposition of
that favourite theory of his--it was so obvious that therein lay its
security. He had mocked at the Magpie not many moments before on that
score--and now it was the beam in his own eye! It was so obvious now, so
glaringly obvious, that the Crime Club could have been nowhere else; so
obvious, with every word of the Tocsin's story pointing it out like a
signpost--and he had not seen it!

And then suddenly every muscle grew strained and rigid. WAS THERE SOME
ONE IN THE CORRIDOR? Was it some one moving--or was it only fancy? He
listened--while he strained his eyes through the darkness. There was no
sound; only that abnormal, heavy silence that--yes, he remembered that,