y. The man,
however, ran out after him asking: "What do you require?" but with a
grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain R-'s
examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he bolted
down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a place of
dusk and mystery and many doors. He had been afraid of being stopped by
some rule of no-admittance. However he was not pursued.

The basement of St. Katherine's Dock House is vast in extent and
confusing in its plan. Pale shafts of light slant from above into the
gloom of its chilly passages. Powell wandered up and down there like an
early Christian refugee in the catacombs; but what little faith he had in
the success of his enterprise was oozing out at his finger-tips. At a
dark turn under a gas bracket whose flame was half turned down his self-
confidence abandoned him altogether.

"I stood there to think a little," he said. "A foolish thing to do
because of course I got scared. What could you expect? It takes some
nerve to tackle a stranger with a request for a favour. I wished my
namesake Powell had been the devil himself. I felt somehow it would have
been an easier job. You see, I never believed in the devil enough to be
scared of him; but a man can make himself very unpleasant. I looked at a
lot of doors, all shut tight, with a growing conviction that I would
never have the pluck to open one of them. Thinking's no good for one's
nerve. I concluded I would give up the whole business. But I didn't
give up in the end, and I'll tell you what stopped me. It was the
recollection of that confounded doorkeeper who had called after me. I
felt sure the fellow would be on the look-out at the head of the stairs.
If he asked me what I had been after, as he had the right to do, I
wouldn't know what to answer that wouldn't make me look silly if no
worse. I got very hot. There was no chance of slinking out of this
business.

"I had lost my bearings somehow down there. Of the many doors of various
sizes, right and left, a good few had glazed lights above; some however
must have led merely into lumber rooms or such like, because when I
brought myself to try one or two I was disconcerted to find that they
were locked. I stood there irresolute and uneasy like a baffled thief.
The confounded basement was as still as a grave and I became aware of my
heart beats. Very uncomfortable sensation. Never happened to me before
or s