When we had finished reconnoitering we returned to the room we first entered, which apparently was the kitchen.  We could still hear the voices, but not distinctly.  “Do you stay here, Doc,” whispered Maitland, “while I get into some old clothes and hunt up the landlord of this place.  I’m going to rent these rooms long enough to acquaint myself with my neighbours on the other side of the wall.  I’ll be back soon.  Don’t let any man leave that room without your knowing where he goes.”  With this he left me and I soon found a way to busy myself in his absence.  In the wall above the stove, where the pipe passed through the partition into our neighbour’s apartment, there was a chink large enough to permit me, when mounted upon the stove, to overlook the greater part of the adjacent room.  I availed myself of this privilege, though not without those same twinges of conscience which I had felt some minutes before when following the young lady.  The apartment was poorly furnished, and yet, despite this scantiness of appointment, there was unmistakable evidence of refinement.  Everything visible in the room was scrupulously neat and the few pictures that adorned the walls, while they were inexpensive half-tones, were yet reproductions of masterpieces.  In the centre of the room stood a small, deal table, on the opposite side of which sat the man who had answered my letter.

At one end of the table, poised upon the back of a chair, sat a small Capucin monkey of the Weeper or Sai species.  He watched the man with that sober, judicial air which is by no means confined exclusively to supreme benches.  I, too, observed the man carefully.  He was tall and spare.  He must have measured nearly six feet in height and could not, I think, have weighed over one hundred and fifty pounds.  His face was pinched and careworn, but this effect was more than redeemed by a pair of full, black eyes having a depth and penetration I have never seen equalled, albeit there was, ever and anon, a suggestion of wildness which somewhat marred their deep, contemplative beauty.  The brows and the carriage of the head at once bespoke the scholar.  While thus I watched him, the young girl came from a corner of the room I could not overlook and laid my letter before him.  She stood behind his chair as he opened it, smoothing his hair caressingly and, every now and then, kissing him gently.  He paused with the open letter before him, reached up both arms, drew her down to him, kissed her passionately, sighed, and picked up the letter again.  I took pains that no act, word, or look should escape me.  This show of affection surprised me, and I remember the thought flashed through my mind, “What inconsistent beings we all are!  Here is a man apparently capable of a causeless and cold-blooded assassination of a harmless old man.  You would say such a murderer must be hopelessly selfish and brutal, amenable to none of the better sentiments of mankind, and yet it needs but a casual glance to see how his whole life is bound up in the young girl before him.”