Here I started up for I could not contain myself at the thought that the minutes and seconds so preciously laden with Mina’s life and happiness were flying from us, since whilst we talked action was impossible.  But Van Helsing held up his hand warningly.

“Nay, friend Jonathan,” he said, “in this, the quickest way home is the longest way, so your proverb say.  We shall all act and act with desperate quick, when the time has come.  But think, in all probable the key of the situation is in that house in Piccadilly.  The Count may have many houses which he has bought.  Of them he will have deeds of purchase, keys and other things.  He will have paper that he write on.  He will have his book of cheques.  There are many belongings that he must have somewhere.  Why not in this place so central, so quiet, where he come and go by the front or the back at all hours, when in the very vast of the traffic there is none to notice.  We shall go there and search that house.  And when we learn what it holds, then we do what our friend Arthur call, in his phrases of hunt ’stop the earths’ and so we run down our old fox, so?  Is it not?”

“Then let us come at once,” I cried, “we are wasting the precious, precious time!”

The Professor did not move, but simply said, “And how are we to get into that house in Piccadilly?”

“Any way!” I cried.  “We shall break in if need be.”

“And your police?  Where will they be, and what will they say?”

I was staggered, but I knew that if he wished to delay he had a good reason for it.  So I said, as quietly as I could, “Don’t wait more than need be.  You know, I am sure, what torture I am in.”

“Ah, my child, that I do.  And indeed there is no wish of me to add to your anguish.  But just think, what can we do, until all the world be at movement.  Then will come our time.  I have thought and thought, and it seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all.  Now we wish to get into the house, but we have no key.  Is it not so?” I nodded.

“Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could not still get in.  And think there was to you no conscience of the housebreaker, what would you do?”

“I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the lock for me.”

“And your police, they would interfere, would they not?”

“Oh no!  Not if they knew the man was properly employed.”

“Then,” he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, “all that is in doubt is the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to whether or not that employer has a good conscience or a bad one.  Your police must indeed be zealous men and clever, oh so clever, in reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter.  No, no, my friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty houses in this your London, or of any city in the world, and if you do it as such things