have been uneasy.”
Johnson planned the campaign. He suggested on account of my familiarity with the roof, that I go there and cut off escape in that direction. “I have Robison out there now - the patrolman on the beat,” he said. “He’ll watch below and you above, while I search the house. Be as quiet as possible.”
I was rather amused. I put on some clothes and felt my way carefully up the stairs, the revolver swinging free in my pocket, my hand on the rail. At the foot of the ladder I stopped and looked up. Above me there was a gray rectangle of sky dotted with stars. It occurred to me that with my one serviceable hand holding the ladder, I was hardly in a position to defend myself, that I was about to hoist a body that I am rather careful of into a danger I couldn’t see and wasn’t particularly keen about anyhow. I don’t mind saying that the seconds it took me to scramble up the ladder were among the most unpleasant that I recall.
I got to the top, however, without incident. I could see fairly well after the darkness of the house beneath, but there was nothing suspicious in sight. The roofs, separated by two feet of brick wall, stretched around me, unbroken save by an occasional chimney. I went very softly over to the other trap, the one belonging to the suspected house. It was closed, but I imagined I could hear Johnson’s footsteps ascending heavily. Then even that was gone. A near-by clock struck three as I stood waiting. I examined my revolver then, for the first time, and found it was empty!
I had been rather skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant attitude of the man who is summoned from his bed to search for burglars, combined with the artificial courage of firearms. With the discovery of my empty gun, I felt like a man on the top of a volcano in lively eruption. Suddenly I found myself staring incredulously at the trap- door at my feet. I had examined it early in the evening and found it bolted. Did I imagine it, or had it raised about an inch? Wasn’t it moving slowly as I looked? No, I am not a hero: I was startled almost into a panic. I had one arm, and whoever was raising that trap-door had two. My knees had a queer inclination to bend the wrong way.
Johnson’s footsteps were distinct enough, but he was evidently far below. The trap, raised perhaps two inches now, remained stationary. There was no sound from beneath it: once I thought I heard two or three gasping respirations: I am not sure they were not my own. I wanted desperately to stand on one leg at a time and hold the other up out of focus of a possible revolver.
I did not see the hand appear. There was nothing there, and then it was there, clutching the frame of the trap. I did the only thing I could think of; I put my foot on it!
There was not a sound from beneath. The next moment I was kneeling and had clutched the wrist just above the hand. After a second’s struggle, the arm was still. With something real to face, I was myself again.
“Don’t move, or I’ll stand on the trap and break your arm,” I panted. What else could I threaten? I couldn’t shoot, I couldn’t even fight. “Johnson!” I called.
And then I realized the thing that stayed with me for a month, the thing I can not think of even now without a shudder. The hand lay ice cold, strangely quiescent. Under my fingers, an artery was beating feebly. The wrist was as slender as - I held the hand to the light. Then I let it drop.
“Good Lord,” I muttered, and remained on my knees, staring at the spot where the hand had been. It was gone now: there was a faint rustle in the, darkness below, and then silence.
I held up my own hand in the starlight and stared at a long scratch in the palm. “A woman!” I said to myself stupidly. “By all that’s ridiculous, a woman!”
Johnson was striking matches below and swearing softly to himself. “How the devil do you get to the roof?” he called. “I think I’ve broken my nose.”
He found the ladder after a short search and stood at the bottom, looking up at me. “Well, I suppose you haven’t seen him?” he inquired. “There are enough darned cubbyholes in this house to hide a patrol wagon load of thieves.” He lighted a fresh match. “Hello, here’s another door!”
By the sound of his diminishing footsteps I supposed it was a rear staircase. He came up again in ten minutes or so, this time with the policeman.
“He’s gone, all right,” he said ruefully. “If you’d been attending to your business, Robison, you’d have watched the back door.”
“I’m not twins.” Robison was surly.
“Well,” I broke in, as cheerfully as I could, “if you are through with this jolly little affair, and can get down my ladder without having my housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some good Monongahela whisky - eh?”
They came without a second invitation across the roof, and with them safely away from the house I breathed more freely. Down in the den I fulfilled my promise, which Johnson drank to the toast, “Coming through the rye.” He examined my gun rack with the eye of a connoisseur, and even when he was about to go he cast a loving eye back at the weapons.
“Ever been in the army?” he inquired.
“No,” I said with a bitterness that he noticed but failed to comprehend. “I’m a chocolate cream soldier - you don’t read Shaw, I suppose, Johnson?”
“Never heard of him,” the detective said indifferently. “Well, good night, Mr. Blakeley. Much obliged.” At the door he hesitated and coughed.
“I suppose you understand, Mr. Blakeley,” he said awkwardly, “that this - er - surveillance is all in the day’s work. I don’t like it, but it’s duty. Every man to his duty, sir.”
“Sometime when you are in an open mood, Johnson,” I returned, “you can explain why I am being watched at all.”
CHAPTER XV
THE CINEMATOGRAPH
On Monday I went out for the first time. I did not go to the office. I wanted to walk. I thought fresh air and exercise would drive away the blue devils that had me by the throat. McKnight insisted on a long day in his car, but I refused.
“I don’t know why not,” he said sulkily. “I can’t walk. I haven’t walked two consecutive blocks in three years. Automobiles have made legs mere ornaments - and some not even that. We could have Johnson out there chasing
