And without further disguise I acquainted the startled woman before me with the fact that I was not, as she had always considered, the clerk out of employment whose daily business it was to sally forth in quest of a situation, but a member of the city police.

She was duly impressed and easily persuaded to second all my operations as far as her poor wits would allow, giving me free range of her upper story, and above all, promising that secrecy without which all my finely laid plans for capturing the rogues without raising a scandal, would fall headlong to the ground.

Behold me, then, by noon of that same day domiciled in an apartment next to the one whose door bore that scarlet sign which had aroused within me such feverish hopes the night before.  Clad in the seedy garments of a broken down French artist whose acquaintance I had once made, with something of his air and general appearance and with a few of his wretched daubs hung about on the whitewashed wall, I commenced with every prospect of success as I thought, that quiet espionage of the hall and its inhabitants which I considered necessary to a proper attainment of the end I had in view.

A racking cough was one of the peculiarities of my friend, and determined to assume the character in toto, I allowed myself to startle the silence now and then with a series of gasps and chokings that whether agreeable or not, certainly were of a character to show that I had no desire to conceal my presence from those I had come among.  Indeed it was my desire to acquaint them as fully and as soon as possible with the fact of their having a neighbor:  a weak-eyed half-alive innocent to be sure, but yet a neighbor who would keep his door open night and day—­for the warmth of the hall of course—­and who with the fretful habit of an old man who had once been a gentleman and a beau, went rambling about through the hall speaking to those he met and expecting a civil word in return.  When he was not rambling or coughing he made architectural monsters out of cardboard, wherewith to tempt the pennies out of the pockets of unwary children, an employment that kept him chained to a small table in the centre of his room directly opposite the open door.

As I expected I had scarcely given way to three separate fits of coughing, when the door next me opened with a jerk and a rough voice called out,

“Who’s that making all that to do about here?  If you don’t stop that infernal noise in a hurry—­”

A soft voice interrupted him and he drew back.  “I will go see,” said those gentle tones, and Luttra Blake, for I knew it was she before the skirt of her robe had advanced beyond the door, stepped out into the hall.

I was yet bent over my work when she paused before me.  The fact is I did not dare look up, the moment was one of such importance to me.

“You have a dreadful cough,” said she with that low ring of sympathy in her voice that goes unconsciously to the heart.  “Is there no help for it?”