“You’re early,” said a voice, softly, near us, of a sudden.

I leaped to my feet, prepared to meet anything, man or devil.  Garrick seized me and pulled me down, a strong hint to be quiet.  Too surprised to remonstrate, since nothing happened, I waited, breathless.

“Yes, but that is better than to be too late.  Besides, we’ve got to watch that Garrick,” said another voice.  “He might be around.”

Garrick chuckled.

I had noticed a peculiar metallic ring in the voices.

“Where are they?” I whispered, “On the landing below?”

Garrick laughed outright, not boisterously, but still in a way which to me was amazing in its bravado, if the tenants were really so near.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Don’t you recognize it?” he answered.

“Yes,” I said doubtfully.  “I suppose it’s like that thing we used down at the Old Tavern.”

“Only more so,” nodded Garrick, aloud, yet careful not to raise his voice, as before, so as not to disturb the flat dwellers below us.  “A vocaphone.”

“A vocaphone?” I repeated.

“Yes, the little box that hears and talks,” he explained.  “It does more than the detectaphone.  It talks right out, you know, and it works both ways.”

I began to understand his scheme.

“Those square holes in the face of it are just like the other instrument we used,” Garrick went on.  “They act like little megaphones to that receiver inside, you know,—­magnify the sound and throw it out so that we can listen up here just as well, perhaps better than if we were down there in the room with them.”

They were down there in the back room, Lucille and a man.

“Have you heard from her?” asked the man’s voice, one that I did not recognise.

“Non,—­but she will come.  Voila, but she thought the world of her Lucille, she did.  She will come.”

“How do you know?”

“Because—­I know.”

“Oh, you women!”

“Oh, you men!”

It was evident that the two had a certain regard for each other, a sort of wild, animal affection, above, below, beyond, without the law.  They seemed at least to understand each other.

Who the man was I could not guess.  It was a voice that sounded familiar, yet I could not place it.

“She will come to see her Lucille,” repeated the woman.  “But you must not be seen.”

“No—­by no means.”

The voice of the man was not that of a foreigner.

“Here, Lucille, take this.  Only get her interested—­I will do the rest—­and the money is yours.  See—­you crush it in the handkerchief—­so.  Be careful—­you will crush it before you want to use it.  There.  Under her nose, you know.  I shall be there in a moment and finish the work.  That is all you need do—­with the handkerchief.”

Garrick made a motion, as if to turn a switch in the little vocaphone, and rested his finger on it.