Reaching the house, they hurried up stairs, hoping to run the gauntlet of the three floors in safety.  Luckily, there had been a general move from the premises—­the lodgings being less desirable since the supposed murder.  The faces which thrust themselves out of the doorways as the two visitors passed, were strange ones.

Marcus felt his heart palpitating, and his face growing pale, as they ascended the last flight of stairs, at the head of which were the room and the mystery.  The lodgings had not been taken.  The rent had been paid by Mr. Minford up to the 1st of May; and no person had been sufficiently charmed with the apartments to hire them since that date.

Upon the door was a placard, announcing that the key could be obtained by application to the floor below.  Tiffles went for it, and returned accompanied by an old woman, who looked as if she knew a great deal which she did not care to tell.  She had been requested by the landlord to show the apartments to applicants, but not to whisper a word about the murder; and she was almost bursting with her great secret.  While the old woman was wondering how much longer she would be able to hold in, Marcus and Tiffles entered the front room, and quietly closed the door in her face.  The old woman grumbled at this discourtesy but, as she had a superstitious objection to putting her foot in a room where a murder had been committed, she leaned against the banisters of the stairs, and waited for the visitors’ reappearance.

The room looked just as it did on the day of the inquest.  The faded and worn furniture was all there; the yellow curtains still covered the windows; the clock still hung against the wall, tickless.  Marcus’s eyes glanced restlessly about the room for a moment, not daring to look at the spot where the old man had received his death blow.  But an inevitable magnetism soon brought his eyes to it, and his heart was lightened as he saw that the blood stains had been carefully wiped out.

The door of the adjoining room—­the maiden’s bedchamber—­was ajar.  Marcus pushed it open with that slow motion which is a token of delicacy and respect.  The general appearance of the room was unchanged, as well as Marcus could recollect from the occasional glimpses of it which he had formerly stolen.  The little row of dresses which hung on pegs in a corner, and a few simple ornaments, might have been removed, but nothing more.  Marcus felt that he was intruding here, and he closed the door.

In the mean time, Wesley Tiffles had been examining the mysterious machine, which stood undisturbed in its corner, with the protecting screen still standing before it.  Tiffles had first wiped off the dust, and then looked into it, and through it, and over it, and under it, with an eye that was predetermined to pry out a secret.  Then he felt of every wheel, lever, cam, ratchet, drum, and other portion within reach of his fingers.  Everything was immovable.  Then he stood aloof from the machine, folded his arms, pursed up his lips, and cocked an eye at it, as if, by the mere force of intellect, he would compel the dumb thing to give up its mystery.