“So do I!  But I don’t believe you will.  Yes, tell Parks to let me in whenever I come around.  And now about Rogers.”

“What about him?”

“I rather thought I might want to grill him to-night.  But perhaps I would better wait till I get a little more to go on.”  He paused for a moment’s thought.  “Yes; I’ll wait,” he said, finally.  “I don’t want to run any risk of failing.”

We went out into the hall together, and I told Parks to admit Godfrey, whenever he wished to enter.  Rogers was still sitting on the cot, looking so crushed and sorrowful that I could not help pitying him.  I began to think that, if he were left to himself a day or two longer, he would tell all we wished to know without any grilling.

I confided this idea to Godfrey as we went down the front steps.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed.  “I don’t believe the fellow is really crooked.  Something has happened to him—­something in connection with that woman—­and he has never got over it.  Well, we shall have to find out what it was.  Hello, here are Simmonds’s men,” he added, as two policemen stopped before the house.

“Is this Mr. Godfrey?” one of them asked.

“Yes,” said Godfrey.

“Mr. Simmonds told us to report to you, sir, if you were here.”

“What we want you to do,” said Godfrey, “is to watch the house—­watch it from all sides—­patrol clear around it, and see that no one approaches it.”

“Very well, sir,” and the men touched their helmets, and one of them went around to the back of the house, while the other remained in front.

“Perhaps if they concealed themselves,” I suggested, “the fellow might venture back and be nabbed.”

But Godfrey shook his head.

“I don’t want him to venture back,” he said.  “I want to scare him off.  I want him to see we’re thoroughly on guard.”  He hailed a passing cab, and paused with one foot on the step.  “I’ve already told you, Lester,” he added, over his shoulder, “that I’m afraid of him.  Perhaps you thought I was joking, but I wasn’t.  I was never more serious in my life.  The Record office,” he added to the cabby, and jingled away, leaving me staring after him.

As I turned homeward, I could not but ponder over this remarkable and mysterious being with whom Godfrey was so impressed.  Never before had I known him to hesitate to match himself with any adversary; but now, it seemed to me, he shunned the contest, or at least feared it —­feared that he might be outwitted and outplayed!  How great a compliment that was to the mysterious unknown only I could guess!

And then I shivered a little as I recalled that mocking and ironic laughter.  And I quickened my step, with a glance over my shoulder; for if Godfrey was afraid, how much more reason had I to be!  It was with a sense of relief, of which I was a little ashamed, that I reached my apartment at the Marathon and locked the door.