Where was he?  Conjecture stopped there.  Evidently he was where the courteous gentleman in the restaurant wanted him to be.  A prisoner?  Probably.  In danger?  Long, careful attention to detail work in the Secret Service had convinced Mr. Grimm that he was always in danger.  That was one reason—­and the best—­why he had lain motionless, without so much as lifting a finger, since that first glimmer of consciousness had entered his brain.  He was probably under scrutiny, even in the darkness, and for the present it was desirable to accommodate any chance watcher by remaining apparently unconscious.

And so for a long time he lay, listening.  Was there another person in the room?  Mr. Grimm’s ears were keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing.  Nothing.  Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive.  At last he opened his eyes.  A pall of gloom encompassed him—­a pall without one rift of light.  His fingers, moving slowly, explored the limits of the couch whereon he lay.

Confident, at last, that wherever he was, he was unwatched, Mr. Grimm was on the point of concluding that further inaction was useless, when his straining ears caught the faint grating of metal against metal—­perhaps the insertion of a key in the lock.  His hands grew still; his eyes closed.  And after a moment a door creaked slightly on its hinges, and a breath of cool air informed Mr. Grimm that that open door, wherever it was, led to the outside, and freedom.

There was another faint creaking as the door was shut.  Mr. Grimm’s nerveless hands closed involuntarily, and his lips were set together tightly.  Was it to be a knife thrust in the dark?  If not—­then what?  He expected the flare of a match; instead there was a soft tread, and the rustle of skirts.  A woman!  Mr. Grimm’s caution was all but forgotten in his surprise.  As the steps drew nearer his clenched fingers loosened; he waited.

Two hands stretched forward in the dark, touched him simultaneously—­one on the face, one on the breast.  A singular thrill shot through him, but there was not the flicker of an eye or the twitching of a finger.  The woman—­it was a woman—­seemed now to be bending over him, then he heard her drop on her knees beside him, and she pressed an inquiring ear to his left side.  It was the heart test.

“Thank God!” she breathed softly.

It was only by a masterful effort that Mr. Grimm held himself limp and inert, for a strange fragrance was enveloping him—­a fragrance he well knew.

The hands were fumbling at his breast again, and there was the sharp crackle of paper.  At first he didn’t understand, then he knew that the woman had pinned a paper to the lapel of his coat.  Finally she straightened up, and took two steps away from him, after which came a pause.  His keenly attuned ears caught her faint breathing, then the rustle of her skirts as she turned back.  She was leaning over him again—­her lips touched his forehead, barely; again there was a quick rustling of skirts, the door creaked, and—­silence, deep, oppressive, overwhelming silence.