Bill Gregg drew himself up rigidly and slowly replaced the hat on his head.  If a man had turned that trick on him, a .45-caliber slug would have gone crashing through the door in search of him to teach him a Westerner’s opinion of such manners.

Ronicky Doone could not help smiling to himself, as he saw Bill Gregg stump stiffly down the stairs, limping a little on his wounded leg, and come back with a grave dignity to the starting point.  He was still crimson to the roots of his hair.

“Let’s start,” he said.  “If that happens again I’ll be doing a couple of murders in this here little town and getting myself hung.”

“What happened?”

“An old hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell.  I asked her nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house?  ‘No,’ says she, ‘and if she was, what’s that to you?’ I told her I’d come a long ways to see Caroline.  ’Then go a long ways back without seeing Caroline,’ says this withered old witch, and she banged the door right in my face.  Man, I’m still seeing red.  Them words of the old woman were whips, and every one of them sure took off the hide.  I used to think that old lady Moore in Martindale was a pretty nasty talker, but this one laid over her a mile.  But we’re beat, Ronicky.  You couldn’t get by that old woman with a thousand men.”

“Maybe not,” said Ronicky Doone, “but we’re going to try.  Did you look across the street and see a sign a while ago?”

“Which side?”

“Side right opposite Caroline’s house.”

“Sure.  ‘Room To Rent.’”

“I thought so.  Then that’s our room.”

“Eh?”

“That’s our room, partner, and right at the front window over the street one of us is going to keep watch day and night, till we make sure that Caroline Smith don’t live in that house.  Is that right?”

“That’s a great idea!” He started away from the fence.

“Wait!” Ronicky caught him by the shoulder and held him back.  “We’ll wait till night and then go and get that room.  If Caroline is in the house yonder, and they know we’re looking for her, it’s easy that she won’t be allowed to come out the front of the house so long as we’re perched up at the window, waiting to see her.  We’ll come back tonight and start waiting.”

Chapter Eight

Two Apparitions

They found that the room in the house on Beekman Place, opposite that which they felt covered their quarry, could be secured, and they were shown to it by a quiet old gentlewoman, found a big double room that ran across the whole length of the house.  From the back it looked down on the lights glimmering on the black East River and across to the flare of Brooklyn; to the left the whole arc of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge was exposed.  In front the windows overlooked Beekman Place and were directly opposite, the front of the house to which the taxi driver had gone that afternoon.