Locke’s very convenient radium clock showed Hutchins four-thirty the last time he looked at it, and after that he fell into a deep and exhausted slumber. The two guards, one in the studio and one in the lower hall, dozed a little, too, though they didn’t really sleep.
But at six o’clock, Hutchins’ eyes flew open wide, and he pulled his wits together in an effort to decide whether he had heard something or had dreamed it.
Another instant, and he sensed a movement of some sort that suggested the near-by presence of a human being.
It was scarcely a sound—more like a stealthy moving thing that was perceptible through feeling rather than the ear.
Silently Hutchins sat up in bed. He was wide awake, every sense alert, and ready to spring when he deemed best.
He hadn’t the slightest doubt that it was Locke, returning on some necessary errand, and hoping to find his room unoccupied.
Then the movement came again, it became almost a sound, and in the faint glimmer of dawn, Hutchins saw a figure coming slowly, silently but steadily toward him as he lay in bed.
He waited, eyes almost closed, until the person was within arm’s reach and then jumped up and grabbed him.
A fearful shriek was the result, and in an instant Hutchins had snapped on the light and discovered that he was holding the squirming, fighting, struggling form of the Chinese boy, Charley.
“You!” he exclaimed in a sudden burst of absurd disappointment that it was not Locke.
