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fact that an iron curtain had dropped between him and the outer world.
They heard him go to the door, try the handle and rattle the lock, and
then the voice of the officer who was stationed on the landing telling
him it was no good to do that. Then afterwards they heard him at the
windows and saw the men outside looking up. "It's no good that way,"
said the second officer. Then Redwood began upon the bell. The senior
officer went up and explained very patiently that it could do no good to
ring the bell like that, and if it was rung for nothing now it might
have to be disregarded presently when he had need of something. "Any
reasonable attendance, Sir," the officer said. "But if you ring it just
by way of protest we shall be obliged, Sir, to disconnect."
The last word the officer heard was Redwood's high-pitched, "But at
least you might tell me if my Son--"
II.
After that Redwood spent most of his time at the windows.
But the windows offered him little of the march of events outside. It
was a quiet street at all times, and that day it was unusually quiet:
scarcely a cab, scarcely a tradesman's cart passed all that morning. Now
and then men went by--without any distinctive air of events--now and
then a little group of children, a nursemaid and a woman going shopping,
and so forth. They came on to the stage right or left, up or down the
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