One thing, and only one thing, caused a movement in the set figure before him.  When he mentioned the will which Georgian had made a few hours prior to her disappearance, Hazen’s hand slipped aside from the wound it had sought to cover, and Ransom caught sight of the sudden throb which deepened its hue.  It was the one infallible sign that the man was not wholly without feeling, and it had sprung to life at an intimation involving money.

When his tale was quite finished, he rose.  So did Hazen.

“Let us see this girl,” suggested the latter.

It was the first word he had spoken since Ransom began his story.

“She is up-stairs.  I will go see—­”

“No, we will go see.  I particularly desire to take her unawares.”

Ransom offered no objection.  Perhaps he felt interested in the experiment himself.  Together they left the room, together they went up-stairs.  A turmoil of questions followed them from the throng of men and boys gathered in the halls, but they returned no answer and curiosity remained unsatisfied.

Once in the hall above, Ransom stopped a moment to deliberate.  He could not enter Anitra’s room unannounced, and he could not make her hear by knocking.  He must find the landlady.

He knew Mrs. Deo’s room.  He had had more than one occasion to visit it during the last two days.  With a word of explanation to Hazen, he passed down the hall and tapped on the last door at the extreme left.  No one answered, but the door standing ajar, he pushed it quietly open, being anxious to make sure that Mrs. Deo was not there.

The next moment he was beckoning to Hazen.

“Look!” said he, holding the door open with one hand and pointing with the other to a young girl sitting on a low stool by the window, mending, or trying to mend, a rent in her skirt.

“Why, that’s Georgian!” exclaimed Hazen, and hastily entering he approached the anxious figure laboriously pushing her needle in and out of the torn goods, and pricking herself more than once in the attempt.

“Georgian!” he cried again and yet more emphatically, as he stepped up in front of her.

The young girl failed to notice.  Awkwardly drawing her thread out to its extreme length, she prepared to insert her needle again, when her eye caught sight of his figure bending over her, and she looked up quietly and with an air of displeasure, which pleased Ransom,—­he could hardly tell why.  This was before her eyes reached his face; when they had, it was touching to see how she tried to hide the shock caused by its deformity, as she said with a slight gesture of dismissal: 

“I’m quite deaf.  I cannot hear what you say.  If it is the landlady you want, she has gone down-stairs for a minute; perhaps, to the kitchen.”

He did not retreat, if anything he approached nearer, and Ransom was surprised to observe the force and persuasive power of his expression as he repeated: