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.
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