There was silence.  Mr. Dunn thus addressed attempted no answer; not for a full minute.  The two men were measuring each other—­George felt that he did not count at all—­and they were quite too much occupied with this task to heed the passage of time.  To George, who knew little, if anything, of what this silent struggle meant to either, it seemed that the detective stood no show before this Samson of physical strength and intellectual power, backed by a pistol just within reach of his hand.  But as George continued to look and saw the figure of the smaller man gradually dilate, while that of the larger, the more potent and the better guarded, gave unmistakable signs of secret wavering, he slowly changed his mind and, ranging himself with the detective, waited for the word or words which should explain this situation and render intelligible the triumph gradually becoming visible in the young detective’s eyes.

But he was not destined to have his curiosity satisfied so far.  He might witness and hear, but it was long before he understood.

“Brotherson?” repeated their host, after the silence had lasted to the breaking-point.  “Why do you call me that?”

“Because it is your name.”

“You called me Dunn a minute ago.”

“That is true.”

“Why Dunn if Brotherson is my name?”

“Because you spoke under the name of Dunn at the meeting to-night, and if I don’t mistake, that is the name by which you are known here.”

“And you?  By what name are you known?”

“It is late to ask, isn’t it?  But I’m willing to speak it now, and I might not have been so a little earlier in our conversation.  I am Detective Sweetwater of the New York Department of Police, and my errand here is a very simple one.  Some letters signed by you have been found among the papers of the lady whose mysterious death at the hotel Clermont is just now occupying the attention of the New York authorities.  If you have any information to give which will in any way explain that death, your presence will be welcome at Coroner Heath’s office in New York.  If you have not, your presence will still be welcome.  At all events, I was told to bring you.  You will be on hand to accompany me in the morning, I am quite sure, pardoning the unconventional means I have taken to make sure of my man?”

The humour with which this was said seemed to rob it of anything like attack, and Mr. Brotherson, as we shall hereafter call him, smiled with an odd acceptance of the same, as he responded: 

“I will go before the police certainly.  I haven’t much to tell, but what I have is at their service.  It will not help you, but I have no secrets.  What are you doing?”

He bounded towards Sweetwater, who had simply stepped to the window, lifted the shade and looked across at the opposing tenement.

“I wanted to see if it was still snowing,” explained the detective, with a smile, which seemed to strike the other like a blow.  “If it was a liberty, please pardon it.”