Max proceeded carefully to examine the entire
room foot by foot. Opening the door in one corner, he entered the
bathroom, in which, as in the outer apartment, an electric light
was burning. No window was discoverable, and not even an opening for
ventilation purposes. The latter fact he might have deduced from the
stagnation of the atmosphere.
Half an hour or more he spent in this fashion, without having discovered
anything beyond the secret of the observation trap. Again he took out
his pocket-knife, which was a large one with a handsome mother-o'-pearl
handle. Although Mr. Ho-Pin had examined this carefully, he had solved
only half of its secrets. M. Max extracted a little pair of tweezers
from the slot in which they were lodged--as Ho-Pin had not neglected
to do; but Ho-Pin, having looked at the tweezers, had returned them to
their place: M. Max did not do so. He opened the entire knife as though
it had been a box, and revealed within it a tiny set of appliances
designed principally for the desecration of locks!
Selecting one of these, he took up his watch from the table upon which
it lay, and approached the door. It possessed a lever handle of the
Continental pattern, and M. Max silently prayed that this might not be
a snare and a delusion, but that the lock below might be of the same
manufacture.
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