Suppose he were boldly to enter the room on the left of the passage.  Would the mere fact of his having been admitted to the house be sufficient?  Perhaps a further password would be required, or, at any rate, some proof of identity.  The doorkeeper clearly did not know all the members of the gang by sight, but it might be different upstairs.  On the whole it seemed to him that luck had served him very well so far, but that there was such a thing as trusting it too far.  To enter that room was a colossal risk.  He could not hope to sustain his part indefinitely; sooner or later he was almost bound to betray himself, and then he would have thrown away a vital chance in mere foolhardiness.

A repetition of the signal knock sounded on the door below, and Tommy, his mind made up, slipped quickly into the recess, and cautiously drew the curtain farther across so that it shielded him completely from sight.  There were several rents and slits in the ancient material which afforded him a good view.  He would watch events, and any time he chose could, after all, join the assembly, modelling his behaviour on that of the new arrival.

The man who came up the staircase with a furtive, soft-footed tread was quite unknown to Tommy.  He was obviously of the very dregs of society.  The low beetling brows, and the criminal jaw, the bestiality of the whole countenance were new to the young man, though he was a type that Scotland Yard would have recognized at a glance.

The man passed the recess, breathing heavily as he went.  He stopped at the door opposite, and gave a repetition of the signal knock.  A voice inside called out something, and the man opened the door and passed in, affording Tommy a momentary glimpse of the room inside.  He thought there must be about four or five people seated round a long table that took up most of the space, but his attention was caught and held by a tall man with close-cropped hair and a short, pointed, naval-looking beard, who sat at the head of the table with papers in front of him.  As the new-comer entered he glanced up, and with a correct, but curiously precise enunciation, which attracted Tommy’s notice, he asked: 

“Your number, comrade?”

“Fourteen, gov’nor,” replied the other hoarsely.

“Correct.”

The door shut again.

“If that isn’t a Hun, I’m a Dutchman!” said Tommy to himself.  “And running the show darned systematically too—­as they always do.  Lucky I didn’t roll in.  I’d have given the wrong number, and there would have been the deuce to pay.  No, this is the place for me.  Hullo, here’s another knock.”

This visitor proved to be of an entirely different type to the last.  Tommy recognized in him an Irish Sinn Feiner.  Certainly Mr. Brown’s organization was a far-reaching concern.  The common criminal, the well-bred Irish gentleman, the pale Russian, and the efficient German master of the ceremonies!  Truly a strange and sinister gathering!  Who was this man who held in his finger these curiously variegated links of an unknown chain?