The new advertisement duly appeared and on the next day, which was Wednesday—I remember it because it was my hospital day—I received several written answers, and among them, one in which I felt confident I recognised the peculiar z*’s and r*’s of Weltz and Rizzi.

I took it at once to Maitland. He glanced at it a moment and then impulsively grasped my hand. “By Jove, Doc!” he exclaimed, “if this crafty fox doesn’t scent the hound, we shall soon run him to earth. You see he has given no address and signs a new name. We are to write to Carl Cazenove, General Delivery, Boston. Good! we will do so at once, and I will then arrange with the postal authorities to notify me when they deliver the letter. Of course this will necessitate a continuous watch, perhaps for several days, of the general delivery window. It is hardly likely our crafty friend will himself call for the letter, so it will be imperative that someone be constantly on hand to shadow whomsoever he may send as a substitute. May I depend on your assistance in this matter?”

“I will stand by you till we see the thing through,” I said, “though I have to live in the Post Office a month.”

Well, I wrote and mailed the decoy letter and Maitland explained the situation to the postal authorities, who furnished us a comfortable place inside and near the general delivery window. They promised to notify us when anyone called for our letter. Our vigil was not a very long one. On Thursday afternoon the postal clerk signalled to us that Carl Cazenove’s mail had been asked for, and, while he was consuming as much time as possible in finding our letter, Maitland and I quietly stepped out into the corridor. The sight that met our gaze was one for which we had not been at all prepared. There at the window stood a beautiful young girl just on the verge of womanhood. Her frank blue eyes met mine with the utmost candour as I passed by her so that she should be between Maitland and me, and thus unable to elude us, whichever way she turned upon leaving the window. We had previously planned how we should shadow our quarry, one on each side of the street in order not to attract attention, but these tactics seemed to be entirely unnecessary, for the young lady did not have the slightest suspicion that anyone could be in the least interested in her movements. She walked leisurely along, stopping now occasionally to gaze at the shop windows and never once turning to look back. She did not even conceal the letter, but held it in her hand with her porte-monnaie, and I could see that the address was uppermost. A strange sensation came over me as I dogged her steps. I felt as an assassin must feel who tracks his victim into some lonely spot where he may dare to strike him. It was useless for me to tell myself that I was on the side of justice and engaged in an honourable errand. A single glance at the girl’s delicate face, as frank and open as the morning light, brought the hot blush of shame to my cheek. In following her I dimly felt that, in some way, I was seeking to associate her with evil, which seemed little less than sacrilege. I could do nothing, however, but keep on, so I followed her through Devonshire Street, to New Washington and thence down Hanover Street almost to the ferry. Here she turned into an alleyway and, waiting for Maitland to come up, we both saw her enter a house at its farther end.

George glanced hastily up at the house and then said, as he seized me impatiently by the arm: “It’s a tenement house; come on, the chase is not up yet; we, too, must go in!”

So in we went. The young lady had disappeared, but as we entered we heard a door close on the floor above, and felt sure we knew where she had gone. We mounted the stairs as noiselessly as possible and listened in the hall. We could distinguish a woman’s voice and occasionally that of a man, but we could not hear what passed between them. On our right there was a door partly ajar. Maitland pushed it open, and looked in. The room was empty and unfurnished, with the exception of a dilapidated stove which stood against the partition separating this room from the one the young lady had entered. Maitland beckoned to me and I followed him into the room. There was a key on the inside of the door which he noiselessly turned in the lock. He then began to investigate the premises. Three other rooms communicated with the one of which we had taken possession, forming, evidently, a suite which had been let for housekeeping. Everything was in ill-repair, as is the case with most of the cheap tenements in this locality. The previous tenant had not thought it necessary to clean the apartments when quitting them,—for altruism does not flourish at the North End,—but had been content to leave all the dirt for the next occupant.

When we had finished reconnoitering we returned to the room we first entered, which apparently was the kitchen. We could still hear the voices, but not distinctly. “Do you stay here, Doc,” whispered Maitland, “while I get into some old clothes and hunt up the landlord of this place. I’m going to rent these rooms long enough to acquaint myself with my neighbours on the other side of the wall. I’ll be back soon. Don’t let any man leave that room without your knowing where he goes.” With this he left me and I soon found a way to busy myself in his absence. In the wall above the stove, where the pipe passed through the partition into our neighbour’s apartment, there was a chink large enough to permit me, when mounted upon the stove, to overlook the greater part of the adjacent room. I availed myself of this privilege, though not without those same twinges of conscience which I had felt some minutes before when following the young lady. The apartment was poorly furnished, and yet, despite this scantiness of appointment, there was unmistakable evidence of refinement. Everything visible in the room was scrupulously neat and the few pictures that adorned the walls, while they were inexpensive half-tones, were yet reproductions of masterpieces. In the centre of the room stood a small, deal table, on the opposite side of which sat the man who had answered my letter.

At one end of the table, poised upon the back of a chair, sat a small Capucin monkey of the Weeper or Sai species. He watched the man with that sober, judicial air which is by no means confined exclusively to supreme benches. I, too, observed the man carefully. He was tall and spare. He must have measured nearly six feet in height and could not, I think, have weighed over one hundred and fifty pounds. His face was pinched and careworn, but this effect was more than redeemed by a pair of full, black eyes having a depth and penetration I have never seen equalled, albeit there was, ever and anon, a suggestion of wildness which somewhat marred their deep, contemplative beauty. The brows and the carriage of the head at once bespoke the scholar. While thus I watched him, the young girl came from a corner of the room I could not overlook and laid my letter before him. She stood behind his chair as he opened it, smoothing his hair caressingly and, every now and then, kissing him gently. He paused with the open letter before him, reached up both arms, drew her down to him, kissed her passionately, sighed, and picked up the letter again. I took pains that no act, word, or look should escape me. This show of affection surprised me, and I remember the thought flashed through my mind, “What inconsistent beings we all are! Here is a man apparently capable of a causeless and cold-blooded assassination of a harmless old man. You would say such a murderer must be hopelessly selfish and brutal, amenable to none of the better sentiments of mankind, and yet it needs but a casual glance to see how his whole life is bound up in the young girl before him.”

While this was passing through my mind the man had glanced through my letter and thrown it upon the table with an exclamation of disgust. “Bah! he has had the effrontery,” he said petulantly, “to send me what he calls a new mode of treatment and it is in every essential that of Broadbent, well known for more than a quarter of a century. New indeed! I shall never find a doctor who has any scientific acumen. I may as well abandon the search now. Mon Dieu! and they call medicine a science! Bah!” and with a frown he dropped his head despondently upon his hand. The young girl passed her hand gently, soothingly, over his forehead and did not speak for nearly a minute.

“You are not feeling well to-night, father,” she said at length. “M. Godin has been here during my absence.”

“M. Godin!” I exclaimed half aloud, catching at the stovepipe lest I should fall from the stove. “So our rival is hot upon the scent,—probably even ahead of us. How on earth—” But I did not finish the exclamation. My seizure of the pipe upon my side of the partition had produced an audible vibration of that portion extending over the heads of my neighbours. The young girl’s quick ear had detected the sound and she had ceased speaking and fastened her eyes suspiciously upon the aperture through which I was gazing. It seemed to me as if she must see me, yet I dared not move. After a little she seemed reassured and continued: “I knew he had been here. You are always this way after his visits. Why, of late, does he always come when I am away?” The question seemed innocent enough, yet the man to whom it was addressed turned crimson and then as pale as ashes. When he spoke the effort his self-control cost him was terribly apparent.

“We have private business, dear,” he said, “private business.” He hesitated a moment and again his eyes wore the wild look I had first noticed. “I am selling him something,” he continued, “very dear to me—as dear as my heart’s blood, and I expect to get enough for it to guard you from want.”

“And you, father?” the young girl questioned fervently. I thought I noticed a tremor run through his frame, as drawing her face down to his, he said, kissing her, “Me? Never mind me, Puss; this cancer here will take care of me.”

She made no reply, but turned away to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. As she did so she raised her face toward me. I have never been considered particularly sympathetic,—that is, no more than the average,—but there was something in the expression of her face that went to my heart like a knife. I felt as if I were about to sob with her. I do not know what it was that so aroused my sympathies. We are, I fancy, more apt to feel for those whose beauty is like to the ideals we have learned to love, than we are to be moved by the suffering of those whose looks repel us,—and this may have had something to do with my condition,—for the young girl was radiantly beautiful,—yet it could hardly have been the real cause of it.

So rapt was I in the sympathetic contemplation of her that I did not see Maitland’s entrance or realise I was observed till he plucked me by the coat and motioned me to get down. I did so and he told me he had rented the rooms, and laid before me the plan he meant to pursue.

As soon as he had ceased speaking I said to him: “George, you are undoubtedly on the right track. The man in there is the one we are looking for, fast enough, but I am afraid we are a bit too late.”

“Too late!” he exclaimed in a tone that I feared might be overheard. “What the mischief do you mean?”

“I mean,” I replied, “that M. Godin is already upon the scene.”

In the next ten seconds Maitland turned all colours and I edged nearer to him, expecting him to fall, but he did not.

“M. Godin!” he ejaculated at length. “How in the name of all the gods at once—Doc, he’s all they claim for him, and as fascinating as he is clever;” at which last remark a heavy cloud passed over Maitland’s face. “Come,” he continued listlessly, “you may as well tell me all you know about it.”

I then confided to him what I had heard and ended by asking him what he proposed to do.

“Do?” he replied. “There is but one thing I can do, which makes the choice decidedly easy,” and he set his jaws together with a determined expression, the meaning of which I knew full well.

“I shall camp right here,” he said, “till I learn all I wish to know of our neighbours yonder. I have already provided myself with instruments which will enable me to note every movement they make, indeed to photograph them, if necessary, and to hear and record every word they utter. You look surprised, but it is easily done. I will place my lenses there at the chink through which you were gazing and bring the image down into my camera obscura by a prism arranged for total internal reflection. As for the hearing, that is easier yet. I will carefully work away the plaster on this side to-night till I get through to the paper covering their wall. This I will leave intact to use as a diaphragm. I have then only to fasten my carbon to it, and, behold, we have a microphone or telephone—whichever you choose to call it. All I have to look out for is that I get it high enough to avoid the danger of the paper being accidentally broken from the other side, and that I work quietly while removing the plaster. I shall, of course, cover it with a bit of black felt to prevent our light from showing, and to deaden any sounds from this side. This will enable us to hear all that goes on in the other room, but this may not be enough. We may need a phonographic record of what transpires.

“The device whereby I secure this at such a distance is an invention of my own which, for patent reasons—I might almost say ‘patent patent reasons’—I will ask you to kindly keep to yourself. To the diaphragm there I fasten this bit of burnished silver. Upon this I concentrate a pencil of light which, when reflected, acts photographically upon a sensitised moving tape in this little box, and perfectly registers the minutest movement of the receiving diaphragm. How I develop, etch, and reproduce this record, and transform it into a record of the ordinary type, you will see in due time—and will kindly keep secret for the present. You had better go now and send me the things on this list, as soon as possible,” and he passed me a paper, continuing:

“We will not despair yet. Our clever rival may not be ready to prove his case so quickly as we. At all events, when he comes again I shall be in a condition to ascertain how far he has progressed. I have some things I must settle before I can ask for an arrest, and I am not at all sure that M. Godin is in any better condition in this regard than I am. By Jove! I’d give something to know how that wizard has gotten so far without so much as a single sign to indicate that he had even moved in the matter. I say, Doc, it beats me, blessed if it doesn’t! Please say to Miss Darrow that I am at work upon a promising clue-promising for someone, anyway—and may not see her for some time yet.”

I did as he requested, and, if I am any judge of feminine indications, my message did not yield Gwen unmixed pleasure; still, she said nothing to warrant such a supposition on my part. I visited Maitland every day to learn what he might wish me to bring him, and also to carry him his mail, for he had determined to remain constantly on the watch at his new quarters.

I have thus far, in the narration of these incidents been perfectly candid both as regards my friends and myself, and, therefore, that I may continue in like manner to the end, I shall suppress certain qualms which are urging me to silence, and confess myself guilty of some things of which you will, perhaps, think I may well be ashamed. Be that as it may, you shall have the whole truth, however it may affect your opinion of me. One reason why I went to Maitland’s new quarters so often, and stayed there so long, was because I was always permitted to relieve him of his watch. With a telephone receiver strapped to my right ear, and my eyes fastened upon the screen of the camera obscura, I would sit by the hour prying into the affairs of the two people in the next room. I tried for a number of days to ease my conscience by telling myself that I was labouring in the cause of justice, and was not a common eavesdropper. This permitted me to retain a sort of quasi self-respect for a day or two till my honesty rallied itself, and forced me to realise and to admit that I was, to all intents and purposes, a common Paul Pry, performing a disreputable act for the gratification it gave me. I determined I would at least be honest with myself—and this was my verdict. You will, perhaps, fancy that when I arrived at this decision I at once mended my ways and resigned my seat of observation to Maitland’s entirely professional care. This, doubtless, I should have done, if we fallible human beings governed our conduct by our knowledge of what is right and proper. Inasmuch, however, as desires and emotions are the determining factors of human conduct, I did nothing of the sort. I simply watched there day after day, with ever-increasing avidity, until at length I got to be impatient of the duties that took me away, and more than half inclined to neglect them.

I shall gain nothing by attempting to make you believe it was the man in the neighbouring room that interested me, so I shall not essay it. I confess, with a feeling of guilt because I am not more ashamed of it—that it was the young lady who attracted me. You will, I trust, assume I had enough interest in her father to palliate my conduct in a measure. Be generous in your judgment. How do you know you will not be in the same predicament? Think of it! A young woman beautiful beyond my feeble powers of description; her eyes of a heavenly blue; her luxuriant hair like a mass of spun gold; her complexion matched to the tint and transparency of the blush rose—and such a throat! From it came a voice as musical as the unguided waters when Winter rushes down the hills in search of Spring. Never you mind, that’s the way I felt about it, and, if you had been in my place, you’d have been just as bad as I; come, now, you know you would. Suppose I was a bachelor, and almost old enough to be her father. Does that help matters any? Is the heart less hungry because it has been starved? Just look at your history. When nuns have relapsed from other-worldliness to this-worldliness how have they been? I’ll tell you. They have been just a round baker’s dozen times worse than they would have been if they had never undertaken to cheat Nature. Look at the thing fairly. I don’t expect to dodge any blame that I deserve, yet I do want all the palliating circumstances duly noted. Many months have passed since then, and yet the thought of that sweet girl sends a thrill all over me. I wonder where she is now? I feel that we shall meet again some time, and perhaps you will see her yourself. If so, you will see that I couldn’t be expected to withstand any such temptation.

On these visits Maitland and I talked but very little, and while I was spying nothing of interest occurred—i. e., nothing of interest to him—or, if it did, things of interest to me prevented my observing it. On several occasions he alluded vaguely to things he had learned which he said he should not divulge even to me until the proper time came.

Things went on in this way for about two weeks. I visited Maitland daily, and daily the little lady in the next room wove her spell around me. If, as I am inclined to believe, thinking a great deal of a person is much the same thing as thinking of a person a great deal, I must have adored her.

One night, about a fortnight after Maitland’s change of abode, I found Alice in a terrible state of excitement upon my arrival home. She met me at the door, and said Gwen needed my attention at once. I did not stop to hear further particulars, but hastened to the sitting-room, where Gwen lay upon the lounge. She was in a stupor from which it seemed impossible to arouse her. In vain I tried to attract her attention. Her fixed, staring eyes looked through me as if I had been glass. I saw she had received a severe shock, and so, after giving her some medicine, I took Alice aside and asked her what had happened. She said that Gwen and she had been sitting sewing by the window all the afternoon, and talking about Maitland’s recent discoveries. At about five o’clock the Evening Herald was brought in as usual. She, Alice, had picked it up to glance over the news, when, in the column headed “Latest,” she had seen the heading: “The Darrow Mystery Solved!” This she had read aloud, without thinking of the shock the unexpected announcement might give Gwen, when the sudden pallor that had overspread the young woman’s face had brought her to her senses, and she had paused. Her companion, however, had seized the paper when she had hesitated and, in a fever of excitement, had read in a half-audible voice:

But at this juncture the paper had dropped from Gwen’s hands, and she had fallen upon the floor before Alice could reach her.