CHAPTER TWO
THAT fallen oppressor, Storrow remembered, could lay claim to a helpmate who was both active and irruptive. And he had no wish to remain there and haggle over the fruits of victory. He nursed no desire to face the complications attendant upon the interference of the softer sex. He opened the little fire-proofed door on his right and started up the metal- paved stairway that took him circling round and round the elevator-shaft until his head was dizzier than ever and his heart was pounding like a trip-hammer. He had intended to count the floors as he went. In fact, he did count them. But that reckoning could not have been as accurate as he had imagined, for when he reached what he felt sure was his own landing and had groped down the burlap-covered hall to the rear, he found the door that should have been his own hospitable door firmly locked in his face. This, naturally, both bewildered and an- gered him. He shook and tugged at that door, panting, feeling that he would give all he owned for one deep and cooling drink of water, oppressed by the leaden thought that the world at large had in some way turned against him.
He was still tugging and straining at the unyielding brass knob when the companion door on his left was thrown open. He neither turned nor looked up, at that movement in his immediate neighbourhood, since his one wish, at the moment, was for seclusion. Yet he was not unconscious of the fact that from the oblong of light framed by the open door he was being quietly and stu- diously inspected.
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