see the head of the
institution."

Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy
presence of mind.

"Oh, certainly," he said with a weak laugh. "You can see the head of the
asylum if you particularly want to." He almost ran out of the room,
and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an
ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, "Come in,"
MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest.
Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened the door.

It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical
library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with
an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient
to show a slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black
frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat
piles of notes. This gentleman looked up for an instant as they
entered, and the lamplight fell on his glittering spectacles and
long, clean-shaven face--a face which would have been simply like an
aristocrat's but that a certain lion poise of the head and long cleft in
the chin made it look more like a very handsome actor's. It was only for
a flash that his face was thus lifted. Then he bent his silver head over
his notes once more, and said, without looking up again:

"I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C."

Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they could
ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that
to that particular Head of the institution it was a waste of time to
appeal, and they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room.

The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy figures
stepped from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the
galleries. They might very likely have thrown their captors right and
left had they been inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason
they were more inclined to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish
curiosity made them feel quite inclined to see what next twist would
be taken by their imbecile luck. They were dragged down countless cold
avenues lined with glazed tiles, different only in being of different
lengths and set at different angles. They were so many and so monotonous
that to escape back by them would have been far harder than fleeing from
the Hampton Court maze. Only the fact that windows grew fewer, coming
at longer interv