“A true artist,” the commander went on, gently.
“A supreme creator—his mark is everywhere.”
He was staring around with a baffled frown.
“And his capacities included a genius for anonymity: we haven’t found a letter, a photograph, a memorandum—not even a monogram, except the one on the ring and the book.”
Jay Kalam had returned to the Halcyon Bird, to attempt to wrest the secret from the shorthand diary, when Giles Habibula made another discovery.
Bob Star and Giles Habibula were crossing the library, when the old man abruptly halted.
“Lad,” he said, his voice thin and hollow in the vastness of the room, “there’s a hidden passage in the wall of the alcove, yonder.”
With a skeptical interest, Bob Star inquired:
“How do you know?”
“How do you know, lad, which way is up and which is down?”
He sighed heavily.
“It’s a feeling, lad, a blessed instinct.
A matter of subconscious observation.
A precious aptitude, refined by long training.
Old Giles Habibula was not always in the Legion, lad.
Before that night when a woman let him down, he was a free agent, living by his genius.
“Men can’t hide their treasures from Giles Habibula, lad.
For their minds work alike, as their locks do.”
His thin voice sank confidentially.
“When you wish to find something a man has hidden, lad, merely consider the kind of man he is, the circumstances he was in, and you’ll go straight to the hiding place.”
“Do you really think,” Bob Star inquired doubtfully, “that there’s a secret passage here?”
“Think?” echoed the old man, scornfully.
“I know it.”
He pointed.
“That wall, you see, is thick enough to conceal a narrow passage.”
“But I don’t!” Bob Star protested.
“It looks thin enough—”
“That’s because the pillars and hangings are cunningly designed to hide the thickness of it—a clever optical illusion.”
He was waddling toward the alcove.
“The entrance should be in that odd corner.
It’s well concealed from the rest of the room, and convenient to the steps within.”
His thick, deft, oddly sensitive fingers were rubbing and tapping at the richly polished panels of red Venusian hardwood.
“Ah, so,” he breathed.
“Here’s the door.
The dust, you observe, is broken in the crack.”
“I don’t observe,” Bob Star said.
“But if you think it really is a door, I’ll break it down.”
“Wait, lad!” Giles Habibula protested indignantly.
“It might be broken down.
But there’s no aesthetic satisfaction in the breaking down of doors.
That’s a crude admission that craftsmanship has failed.
The very thought is a twisted blade in the heart of genius, lad.
“The means of opening the door are at hand, and we have but to lay our fingers on them.
A switch, no doubt, for the mechanism is doubtless electrical.
The master of this house,” he said slowly, “was elaborately methodical, and himself a great genius.”
Heavy lids drooped briefly over his fishy eyes.
“Ah, so!” he wheezed.
“The op-tiphone, of course!
Some trick with the dials—”
His thick fingers touched the knobs.