He went up the outer steps of St. Katherine's Dock House, the very steps
from which he had some six weeks before surveyed the cabstand, the
buildings, the policemen, the boot-blacks, the paint, gilt, and
plateglass of the Black Horse, with the eye of a Conqueror. At the time
he had been at the bottom of his heart surprised that all this had not
greeted him with songs and incense, but now (he made no secret of it) he
made his entry in a slinking fashion past the doorkeeper's glass box. "I
hadn't any half-crowns to spare for tips," he remarked grimly. 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