raise my small--and
unarmed--army.

So I stood there in the brightly lighted corridor and tried to think. I
got nowhere, but I was driven to action again by the unmistakable sound
of the elevator at the end of the corridor.

I eyed the various cell doors with suspicion; opening any but an empty
room would cause some comment from the occupant, which again would give
me away. Nor did I have time to canvass the joint by peeking into the
one-way bull's eyes, peering into a semi-gloom to see which room was
empty.

So instead of hiding in the corridor, I sloped towards the elevator and
the stairwell that surrounded it, hoping that I could make it before the
elevator rose to my floor.

I know that my passage must have sounded like a turbojet in full flight,
but I made the stairway and took a headlong leap down the first short
flight of stairs just as the elevator door rolled open. I hit the wall
with a bumping crash that jarred my senses, but I kept my feet and
looked back up the stairs.

I caught a flash of motion; a guard sauntering past the top of the well,
a cigarette in one hand and a lazy-looking air about him. He was
expecting no trouble, and so I gave him none.

I crept up the stairs and poked my head out just at the floor level.

The guard, obviously confident that nothing, but nothing, could ever
happen in this welded metal crib, jauntily peered into a couple of the
rooms at random, took a long squint at the room I'd recently vacated,
and then went on to the end of the hall where he stuck a key in a
signal-box. On his way back he paused again to peer into my room,
straining to see if he could peer past the little shutter over the
bull's eye. Then he shrugged unhappily, and started to return.

I loped down the stairs to the second floor and waited. The elevator
came down, stopped, and the guard repeated his desultory search, not
stopping to pry into any darkened rooms.

Just above the final, first-floor flight, I stopped and sprawled on the
floor with only my head and the nose of my gun over the top step. Below
was the guard's desk and standing beside the desk with anger in every
line of his ugly face was Scholar Phelps!

The elevator came down, stopped, and the guard walked out, to be nailed
by Phelps.

"Your job," snapped the good Scholar coldly, "says you are to walk."

"Well, er--sir--it's--"

"Walk!" stormed Phelps angrily. "You can't cover that stairway in the
elevator, you fumbling idiot."