Abruptly she dropped her weapon and sat up yet straighter in her huddled bed-clothing, mouth and eyes widening with astonishment.

“Well!” she said quite simply—­“I’ll be damned if it ain’t a cop!”

P. Sybarite immediately took occasion to lower his hands to a more comfortable position.

Fright inspired his latent histrionic genius; momentarily he became almost a good actor.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed fervently.  “You’re the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots! Phwew!”

[Illustration:  “You’re the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots!”]

Quite naturally he drew a braided blue cuff across a beaded forehead.

“That’s all very well,” the woman took him up sharply—­“but be careful I don’t shoot after looking.  Cop or no cop, you—­what the devil do you want in my bedroom at this hour of the night?”

“Madam,” P. Sybarite expostulated, aggrieved yet with an air of the utmost candour—­“my duty, of course!”

“Duty!” she echoed.  “What do you think you mean by that?”

“Perhaps,” he countered blandly, “you’re not aware a burglar has passed through this room?”

“A burglar?  What rot!”

“Pardon me, madam,” P. Sybarite lied nonchalantly, “but five minutes ago I was called in by the people in Two-thirty-three Forty-fifth Street, to nab a burglar who’d broken in there.  They thought they had him locked up safe enough in one of the rooms, but when they came to open the door and let me at him—­the bird had flown!  He’d taken a long chance—­swung himself from the window-ledge to a fire-escape five feet away—­don’t ask me how he did it!  I got to the window just in time to see him go over the back fence.  You heard me take a shot at him?  No?”

“No, I didn’t,” said the woman in a manner eloquent of positive incredulity.

“Well, anyway,” P. Sybarite went on with elaborate ease, “I saw this man climb your fire-escape and so I came after him.”

The woman frowned as she weighed this likely story; and P. Sybarite was at pains to conceal any exultation he may have felt over the prompt response of his vivid imagination to the call of exigence.

Would she or wouldn’t she accept that wildly fanciful yarn of his?  For moments that, brief though they must have been, seemed intolerably protracted, he awaited her verdict in the extremest anxiety—­not, however, neglecting to employ the respite thus afforded him to make another quick survey of the room and a second and more shrewd appraisal of its admirably self-possessed tenant.

A bit too florid and ornate—­he concluded—­woman and lodgings alike were somewhat overdone.  A superabundance of gilt and pink marred the colour scheme of the apartment; and there was ostentatious evidence of wealth lavishly expended on its furnishings.  An overpowering voluptuousness of silken clothing dressed the bed itself.