Still, he could not help feeling that he had let Nunn down. How could he possibly help Nunn now that he had managed to get the door jammed? But now he came to think of it, where was Nunn? He had never returned with the gun. Had he realised that he was cutting it fine, and gone down to the foyer to take his place in the ceremony without bothering to tell Goldwasser? Or was it possible that Chiddingfold had managed somehow to waylay him and prevent his return?

He pictured Nunn locked helplessly in a room by Chiddingfold, while Chiddingfold went about his evil designs. It was preposterous. And yet . . . and yet there was something familiar about the picture which made Goldwasser hesitate to reject it entirely. What was it?

A dull feeling ran through him as he suddenly realised. Whatever had become of Nunn, he himself was a man locked helplessly in a room by Chiddingfold! He rose slowly from his chair, as if hauled to his feet by a string from the top of his head. He shook himself. It was fantasy. If he could seriously believe that he was locked in a room by Chiddingfold he would shortly start believing in theosophy and hearing spirit voices. He sat down again, smiling a wry smile.

But he was tempted again with the suspicion, and it occurred to him that there was a very simple way to test the theory. All he had to do was to examine the door and see whether it was in fact locked. He went across and put his eye to the jamb.

When he straightened up again it seemed to him as if his whole philosophy of life, his whole picture of the universe, had been invalidated. He felt profoundly unhappy and uprooted. If he had made such a mistake for so long about Chiddingfold, perhaps he had also made a mistake about Rowe and Riddle and Nunn. Perhaps he was mistaken even about Macintosh. If the vast, shining respectability of Chiddingfold was false, there was neither buoy nor beacon in all the trackless sea.

Clearly he must warn someone about Chiddingfold at once. But whom? And how? He hunted desperately about the room, looking for, he didn’t know what – something to make smoke signals with, a central-heating pipe to tap Morse along – anything. His eye fell on an even more ingenious means of communication – the telephones, standing on Nunn’s desk. The telephone! God in heaven, he could simply phone the police.