press, the gauges of time and heat and air were sent back into the
darkness.

A third button turned on his reading lamp, so arranged that the light
fell from above and behind without shining into his eyes. The first
button turned off the concealed lighting overhead. He reached a mass
of proofsheets from the reading stand, and, pencil in hand, lighting a
cigarette, he began to correct.

The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a man who worked.
Efficiency was its key note, though comfort, not altogether Spartan,
was also manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to tone with the
concrete wall. Across the foot of the bed, an extra coverlet, hung a
gray robe of wolfskins with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where
rested a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of mountain
goat.

Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scribble-pads, there was room
on the big reading stand for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a
thermos bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, stood on a
hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and
thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On
the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open
holster, loosely projected the butt of a .44 Colt's automatic.

At six o'clock, sharp, after gray light had begun to filter through
the wire netting, Dick Forrest, without raising his eyes from the
proofsheets, reached out his right hand and pressed a button in the
second row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese emerged on the
sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore a small tray of burnished copper