Here they took up the vigil.  For four hours one of the two sat with eyes never moving from the street and the windows of the house across the street; and then he left the post, and the other took it.

It was vastly wearying work.  Very few vehicles came into the light of the street lamp beneath them, and every person who dismounted from one of them had to be scrutinized with painful diligence.

Once a girl, young and slender and sprightly, stepped out of a taxi, about ten o’clock at night, and ran lightly up the steps of the house.  Ronicky caught his friend by the shoulders and dragged him to the window.  “There she is now!” he exclaimed.

But the eye of the lover, even though the girl was in a dim light, could not he deceived.  The moment he caught her profile, as she turned in opening the door, Bill Gregg shook his head.  “That’s not the one.  She’s all different, a pile different, Ronicky.”

Ronicky sighed.  “I thought we had her,” he said.  “Go on back to sleep.  I’ll call you again if anything happens.”

But nothing more happened that night, though even in the dull, ghost hours of the early morning they did not relax their vigil.  But all the next day there was still no sign of Caroline Smith in the house across the street; no face like hers ever appeared at the windows.  Apparently the place was a harmless rooming house of fairly good quality.  Not a sign of Caroline Smith appeared even during the second day.  By this time the nerves of the two watchers were shattered by the constant strain, and the monotonous view from the front window was beginning to madden them.

“It’s proof that she ain’t yonder,” said Bill Gregg.  “Here’s two days gone, and not a sign of her yet.  It sure means that she ain’t in that house, unless she’s sick in bed.”  And he grew pale at the thought.

“Partner,” said Ronicky Doone, “if they are trying to keep her away from us they sure have the sense to keep her under cover for as long as two days.  Ain’t that right?  It looks pretty bad for us, but I’m staying here for one solid week, anyway.  It’s just about our last chance, Bill.  We’ve done our hunting pretty near as well as we could.  If we don’t land her this trip, I’m about ready to give up.”

Bill Gregg sadly agreed that this was their last chance and they must play it to the limit.  One week was decided on as a fair test.  If, at the end of that time, Caroline Smith did not come out of the house across the street they could conclude that she did not stay there.  And then there would be nothing for it but to take the first train back West.

The third day passed and the fourth, dreary, dreary days of unfaltering vigilance on the part of the two watchers.  And on the fifth morning even Ronicky Doone sat with his head in his hands at the window, peering through the slit between the drawn curtains which sheltered him from being observed at his spying.  When he called out softly, the sound brought Gregg, with one long leap out of the chair where he was sleeping, to the window.  There could be no shadow of a doubt about it.  There stood Caroline Smith in the door of the house!