Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders.  He was staring down a brilliantly lighted, richly carpeted corridor.  There were doors on one side, windows on the other, the windows all hung with heavy, closely drawn portieres.  The corridor was certainly not on the ground floor, but whether it was on the second or third, or even above that again, he had no means of knowing.  From appearances, though, the place seemed more like a large, private mansion than anything else.

“Just one word more before we proceed,” continued the other.  “I do not wish you to labour under any illusion.  Here we are 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.