The young advertising agent stood against the fence in silent horror, his heart bumping heavily.  His hands were clammy, his feet seemed to have grown larger and taken root.  What damnable complot was this?  A sultry wave of anger passed over him.  This bland, slick, talkative bookseller, was he arranging some blackmailing scheme to kidnap the girl and wring blood-money out of her father?  And in league with Germans, too, the scoundrel!  What an asinine thing for old Chapman to send an unprotected girl over here into the wilds of Brooklyn . . . and in the meantime, what was he to do?  Patrol the back yard all night?  No, the friend and well-wisher had said “We must find some other way.”  Besides, Aubrey remembered something having been said about the old terrier sleeping in the kitchen.  He felt sure Bock would not let any German in at night without raising the roof.  Probably the best way would be to watch the front of the shop.  In miserable perplexity he waited several minutes until the two Germans would be well out of earshot.  Then he unbolted the gate and stole up the alley on tiptoe, in the opposite direction.  It led into Wordsworth Avenue just behind Weintraub’s drug store, over the rear of which hung the great girders and trestles of the “L” station, a kind of Swiss chalet straddling the street on stilts.  He thought it prudent to make a detour, so he turned east on Wordsworth Avenue until he reached Whittier Street, then sauntered easily down Whittier for a block, spying sharply for evidences of pursuit.  Brooklyn was putting out its lights for the night, and all was quiet.  He turned into Hazlitt Street and so back onto Gissing, noticing now that the Haunted Bookshop lights were off.  It was nearly eleven o’clock:  the last audience was filing out of the movie theatre, where two workmen were already perched on ladders taking down the Tarzan electric light sign, to substitute the illuminated lettering for the next feature.

After some debate he decided that the best thing to do was to return to his room at Mrs. Schiller’s, from which he could keep a sharp watch on the front door of the bookshop.  By good fortune there was a lamp post almost directly in front of Mifflin’s house, which cast plenty of light on the little sunken area before the door.  With his opera glasses he could see from his bedroom whatever went on.  As he crossed the street he cast his eyes upward at the facade of Mrs. Schiller’s house.  Two windows in the fourth storey were lit, and the gas burned minutely in the downstairs hall, elsewhere all was dark.  And then, as he glanced at the window of his own chamber, where the curtain was still tucked back behind the pane, he noticed a curious thing.  A small point of rosy light glowed, faded, and glowed again by the window.  Someone was smoking a cigar in his room.