“Here’s the place,” he announced, stopping across the street from a dingy Raines Law Hotel.

“Pretty tough,” I objected.  “Are you sure?”

“Quite,” replied Kennedy, consulting his note book again.

“Well, I’ll be hanged if I’ll go in that joint,” I persisted.

It had no effect on Kennedy.  “Nonsense, Walter,” he replied, crossing the street.

Reluctantly I followed and we entered the place.

“I want a room,” asked Craig as we were accosted by the proprietor, comfortably clad in a loud checked suit and striped shirt sleeves.  “I had one here once before—­forty-nine, I think.”

“Fifty—­” I began to correct.

Kennedy trod hard on my toes.

“Yes, forty-nine,” he repeated.

The proprietor called a stout negro porter, waiter, and bell-hop all combined in one, who led us upstairs.

“Fohty-nine, sah,” he pointed out, as Kennedy dropped a dime into his ready palm.

The negro left us and as Craig started to enter, I objected, “But, Craig, it was fifty-nine, not forty-nine.  This is the wrong room.”

“I know it,” he replied.  “I had it written in the book.  But I want forty-nine—­now.  Just follow me, Walter.”

Nervously I followed him into the room.

“Don’t you understand?” he went on.  “Room forty-nine is probably just the same as fifty-nine, except perhaps the pictures and furniture, only it is on the floor below.”

He gazed about keenly.  Then he took a few steps to the window and threw it open.  As he stood there he took the parts of the rods he had been carrying and fitted them together until he had a pole some eight or ten feet long.  At one end was a curious arrangement that seemed to contain lenses and a mirror.  At the other end was an eye-piece, as nearly as I could make out.

“What is that?” I asked as he completed his work.

“That?  That is an instrument something on the order of a miniature submarine periscope,” Craig replied, still at work.

I watched him, fascinated at his resourcefulness.  He stealthily thrust the mirror end of the periscope out of the window and up toward the corresponding window up stairs.  Then he gazed eagerly through the eye-piece.

“Walter—­look!” he exclaimed to me.

I did.  There, sure enough, was Michael, pacing up and down the room.  He had already preceded us.  In his scared and stealthy manner, he had entered the Raines Law hotel which announced “Furnished Rooms for Gentlemen Only.”  There he had sought a room, fifty-nine, as he had said.

As he came into the room, he had looked about, overcome by the enormity of what he was about to do.  He locked the door.  Still, he had not been able to avoid gazing about fearfully, as he was doing now that we saw him.

Nothing had happened.  Yet he brushed his hand over his forehead and breathed a sigh of relief.  The air seemed to be stifling him and already he had gone to the window and thrown it open.  Then he had gazed out as though there might be some unknown peril in the very air.  He had now drawn back from the window and was considering.  He was actually trembling.  Should he flee?  He whistled softly to himself to keep his shaking fears under control.  Then he started to pace up and down the room in nervous impatience and irresolution.