The country cousin was impressed at last.  With staring eyes and opened mouth, he watched the man who had been sitting only a few tables away from them push back the plate on which lay his bill and rise to his feet.  One of the chief maitres d’hotel handed him his straw hat and cane, two waiters stood behind his chair, the manager hurried forward to see that the way was clear for him.  Yet there was nothing about the appearance of the man himself which seemed to suggest his demanding any of these things.  He was of little over medium height, broad-shouldered, but with a body somewhat loosely built.  He wore quiet grey clothes with a black tie, a pearl pin, and a neat coloured shirt.  His complexion was a little pale, his features well-defined, his eyes dark and penetrating but hidden underneath rather bushy eyebrows.  His deportment was quite unassuming, and he left the place as though entirely ignorant of the impression he created.  The little cluster of chorus girls looked at him almost with awe.  Only one of them ventured to laugh into his face as though anxious to attract his notice.  Another dropped her veil significantly as he drew near.  The millionaire seemed to become a smaller man as he glanced over his shoulder.  The lady who had been recently divorced bent over her plate.  A group of noisy young fellows talking together about a Stock Exchange deal, suddenly ceased their clamour of voices as he passed.  A man sitting alone, with a drawn face, deliberately concealed himself behind a newspaper, and an aldermanic-looking gentleman who was entertaining a fluffy-haired young lady from a well-known typewriting office, looked for a moment like an errant school-boy.  Not one of these people did Sanford Quest seem to see.  He passed out to the elevator, tipped the man who sycophantly took him the whole of the way down without a stop, walked through the crowded hall of the hotel and entered a closed motor-car without having exchanged greetings with a soul.  Yet there was scarcely a person there who could feel absolutely sure that he had not been noticed.

* * * * *

Sanford Quest descended, about ten minutes later, before a large and gloomy-looking house in Georgia Square.  The neighbourhood was, in its way, unique.  The roar and hubbub of the city broke like a restless sea only a block or so away.  On every side, this square of dark, silent houses seemed to be assailed by the clamour of the encroaching city.  For some reason or other, however, it remained a little oasis of old-fashioned buildings, residences, most of them, of a generation passed away.  Sanford Quest entered the house with a latch-key.  He glanced into two of the rooms on the ground-floor, in which telegraph and telephone operators sat at their instruments.  Then, by means of a small elevator, he ascended to the top story and, using another key, entered a large apartment wrapped in gloom until, as he crossed the threshold, he touched the switches of the electric