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 since. A bigger door to the left of me, with a large brass handle
looked as if it might lead into the Shipping Office. I tried it, setting
my teeth. "Here goes!"
"It came open quite easily. And lo! the place it opened into was hardly
any bigger than a cupboard. Anyhow it wasn't more than ten feet by
twelve; and as I in a way expected to see the big shadowy cellar-like
extent of the Shipping Office where I had been once or twice before, I
was extremely startled. A gas bracket hung from the middle of the
ceiling over a dark, shabby writing-desk covered with a litter of
yellowish dusty documents. Under the flame of the single burner which
made the place ablaze with light, a plump, little man was writing hard,
his nose very near the desk. His head was perfectly bald and about the
same drab tint as the papers. He appeared pretty dusty too.