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The police whistle chirped again; and then an authoritative voice: "Get around and watch the saloon back of this, Heeney there's a way out through there from this joint." Jimmie Dale, divested of every stitch of clothing that he had worn, pulled a disreputable collarless flannel shirt over his head, pulled on a dirty and patched pair of trousers, and slipped into a threadbare and filthy coat.
Trotter, once Heeney had skulked about the next corner, quietly crossed the street and sauntered past the parcel-crowned barrel, with his open pocketknife in his hand. One sweep of the knife blade slit the paper wrapper, and without so much as stopping on his way Trotter was able to catch up a handful of the litter it held.
About "J. Heeney," however, he discovered nothing beyond the fact that he had occupied the cellar for several months. Trotter did not want to arouse unnecessary suspicion by overinterrogating "J. Heeney's" neighbors. So he went mildly back to his top-floor room, and sat down and tried to study things out.
This door, in turn, was glass-fronted, but protected by a heavy woven-wire grating. On it was a sign which read: "J. HEENEY. PLUMBING, WIRING AND ELECTRIC SUPPLIES." It was this basement which so inordinately interested Trotter. He essayed several mild inquiries, in handing his frugal parcel of washing over the Chinaman's counter, as to the occupant of the cellar below.
And he knew that Heeney had grubbed and eaten and burrowed his way, like a woodchuck, to the very heart of the First National Trust's wealth. It was only then that the stupendousness of the whole thing came home to Trotter. It was only then that he realized the almost superhuman cunning and pertinacity in this guileless-eyed cellar plotter called Heeney.
As he peered forward, scarcely daring to breathe, he was conscious of the fact that the light had suddenly withered. It vanished from the refracting tunnel sides, as though wiped away by an obliterating black sponge. Even before the truth of the thing had come home to him, he heard the sound of a quietly closed door. Heeney had gone.
Above all, at this, the beginning of things, he wanted to avoid any untimely mis-step. So he made his way to the street, shuttling cautiously back and forth across the avenue, aimless of demeanor, diffident of step, yet ever and always on the lookout. From half a block away he saw Heeney return to his cellar.
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