The discovery sent a thrill over me that almost raised my hair on end.  Was, then, this famous trio to be found in the very house in which I had been myself living for a week or more? over my head in fact?  I could not withdraw my gaze from the mysterious looking object.  I bent near, I listened, I heard what sounded like the suppressed snore of a powerful man, and almost had to lay hold of myself to prevent my hand from pushing open that closed door and my feet from entering.  As it was I did finger the knob a little, but an extra loud snore from within reminded me by its suggestion of strength that I was but a small man and that in this case and at this hour, discretion was the better part of valor.

I therefore withdrew, but for the whole night lay awake listening to catch any sounds that might come from above, and going so far as to plan what I would do if it should be proved that I was indeed upon the trail of the men I was so anxious to encounter.

With the breaking of day I was upon my feet.  A rude step had gone up the stairs a few minutes before and I was all alert to follow.  But I presently considered that my wisest course would be to sound the landlady and learn if possible with what sort of characters I had to deal.  Routing her out of the kitchen, where at that early hour she was already engaged in domestic duties, I drew her into a retired corner and put my questions.  She was not backward in replying.  She had conceived an innocent liking for me in the short time I had been with her—­a display of weakness for which I was myself, perhaps, as much to blame as she—­and was only too ready to pour out her griefs into my sympathizing ear.  For those men were a grief to her, acceptable as was the money they were careful to provide her with.  They were not only always in the house, that is one of them, smoking his old pipe and blackening up the walls, but they looked so shabby, and kept the girl so close, and if they did go out, came in at such unheard of hours.  It was enough to drive her crazy; yet the money, the money—­

“Yes,” said I, “I know; and the money ought to make you overlook all the small disagreeablenesses you mention.  What is a landlady without patience.”  And I urged her not to turn them out.

“But the girl,” she went on, “so nice, so quiet, so sick-looking!  I cannot stand it to see her cooped up in that small room, always watched over by one or both of those burly wretches.  The old man says she is his daughter and she does not deny it, but I would as soon think of that little rosy child you see cooing in the window over the way, belonging to the beggar going in at the gate, as of her with her lady-like ways having any connection with him and his rough-acting son.  You ought to see her—­”

“That is just what I want to do,” interrupted I.  “Not because you have tempted my fancy by a recital of her charms,” I hastened to add, “but because she is, if I don’t mistake, a woman for whose discovery and rescue, a large sum of money has been offered.”