Then as he moved still nearer her, there was the sound of a sudden swift step in the corridor.  The door opened and there stood before them The Other Man, the Husband of The Woman—­Edward Dangerfield.

This, of course, is the grand snoopopathic climax, when the author gets all three of them—­The Man, The Woman, and The Woman’s Husband—­in an hotel room at night.  But notice what happens.

He stood in the opening of the doorway looking at them, a slight smile upon his lips.

“Well?” he said.  Then he entered the room and stood for a moment quietly looking into The Man’s face.

“So,” he said, “it was you.”  He walked into the room and laid the light coat that he had been carrying over his arm upon the table.  He drew a cigar-case from his waistcoat pocket.

“Try one of these Havanas,” he said.

Observe the calm of it.  This is what the snoopopath loves—­no rage, no blustering—­calmness, cynicism.  He walked over towards the mantelpiece and laid his hat upon it.  He set his boot upon the fender.

“It was cold this evening,” he said.  He walked over to the window and gazed a moment into the dark.

“This is a nice hotel,” he said. (This scene is what the author and the reader love; they hate to let it go.  They’d willingly keep the man walking up and down for hours saying “Well!”)

The Man raised his head!  “Yes, it’s a good hotel,” he said.  Then he let his head fall again.

This kind of thing goes on until, if possible, the reader is persuaded into thinking that there is nothing going to happen.  Then: 

“He turned to The Woman.  ‘Go in there,’ he said, pointing to the bedroom door.  Mechanically she obeyed.”  This, by the way, is the first intimation that the reader has that the room in which they were sitting was not a bedroom.  The two men were alone.  Dangerfield walked over to the chair where he had thrown his coat.

“I bought this coat in St. Louis last fall,” he said.  His voice was quiet, even passionless.  Then from the pocket of the coat he took a revolver and laid it on the table.  Marsden watched him without a word.

“Do you see this pistol?” said Dangerfield.

Marsden raised his head a moment and let it sink.

Of course the ignorant reader keeps wondering why he doesn’t explain.  But how can he?  What is there to say?  He has been found out of his own room at night.  The penalty for this in all the snoopopathic stories is death.  It is understood that in all the New York hotels the night porters shoot a certain number of men in the corridors every night.

“When we married,” said Dangerfield, glancing at the closed door as he spoke, “I bought this and the mate to it—­for her—­just the same, with the monogram on the butt—­see!  And I said to her, ’If things ever go wrong between you and me, there is always this way out.’”