Promptly to the dot I met Garrick at the appointed place. Not a word so far had been heard, either from Violet Winslow or Mrs. de Lancey. There was one thing encouraging about it, however. If they had become separated while shopping, as sometimes happens, we should have been likely to hear of it, at least from her aunt.

Garrick was tugging the heavy suitcase which I had seen standing ready down in his office during the afternoon, as well as a small package wrapped up in paper.

"Let me carry that suitcase," I volunteered.

We trudged along across the park, my load getting heavier at every step.

"I\'m not surprised at your being winded," I panted, soon finding myself in the same condition. "What\'s in this—lead?"

"Something that we may need or may not," Garrick answered enigmatically, as we stopped in the shadow to rest.

He carefully took an automatic revolver from an inside pocket and stowed it where it would be handy, in his coat.

We resumed our walk and at last had come nearly up to the house on the first floor of which the maid Lucille was. The suitcase was engaging all my attention, as I shifted it from one hand to the other. Not so Garrick, however. He was looking keenly about us.

"Gad, I must be seeing things to-night!" he exclaimed, his eyes fixed on a figure slouching along, his hat pulled down over his eyes, passing just about opposite us on the other side of the street. I looked also in the gathering dusk. The figure had something indefinably familiar about it, but a moment later it was gone, having turned the corner.

Garrick shook his head. "No," he said half to himself, "it couldn\'t have been. Don\'t stop, Tom. We mustn\'t do anything to rouse suspicion, now."

We came a moment later to the flat-house through the hall of which we had reached the roof that morning and in the excitement of the adventure I forgot, for the time, the mysterious figure across the street, which had attracted Garrick\'s attention.

Again, we managed to elude the tenants, though it was harder in the early evening than it had been in the daytime. However, we reached the roof apparently unobserved. There at least, now that it was dark, we felt comparatively safe. No one was likely to disturb us there, provided we made no noise.

Unwrapping the smaller, paper-covered package, Garrick quickly attached the wires, as he had left them, to another cedar box, like that which he had already let down the chimney up the street.

I now had a chance to examine it more closely under the light of
Garrick\'s little electric bull\'s-eye. I was surprised to find that it
resembled one of the instruments we had used down in the room in the
Old Tavern.

It was oblong, with a sort of black disc fixed to the top. In the face of the box, just as in the other we had used, were two little square holes, with sides also of cedar, converging inward, making a pair of little quadrangular pyramidal holes which seemed to end in a small round black circle in the interior, small end.

I said nothing, but I could see that it was a new form, to all intents and purposes, of the detectaphone which we had already used.

The minutes that followed seemed like hours, as we waited, not daring to talk lest we should attract attention.

I wondered whether Miss Winslow would come after all, or, if she did, whether she would come alone.

"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............