yonder, and they know we're looking for her, it's easy that she
won't be allowed to come out the front of the house so long as we're
perched up at the window, waiting to see her. We'll come back tonight
and start waiting."

Chapter Eight

_Two Apparitions_

They found that the room in the house on Beekman Place, opposite that
which they felt covered their quarry, could be secured, and they were
shown to it by a quiet old gentlewoman, found a big double room that
ran across the whole length of the house. From the back it looked down
on the lights glimmering on the black East River and across to the
flare of Brooklyn; to the left the whole arc of the Fifty-ninth Street
Bridge was exposed. In front the windows overlooked Beekman Place
and were directly opposite, the front of the house to which the taxi
driver had gone that afternoon.

Here they took up the vigil. For four hours one of the two sat with
eyes never moving from the street and the windows of the house across
the street; and then he left the post, and the other took it.

It was vastly wearying work. Very few vehicles came into the light of
the street lamp beneath them, and every person who dismounted from one
of them had to be scrutinized with painful diligence.

Once a girl, young and slender and sprightly, stepped out of a taxi,
about ten o'clock at night, and ran lightly up the steps of the house.
Ronicky caught his friend by the shoulders and dragged him to the
window. "There she is now!" he exclaimed.

But the eye of the lover, even though the girl was in a dim light,
could not he deceived. The moment he caught her profile, as she turned
in opening the door, Bill Gregg shook his head. "That's not the one.
She's all different, a pile different, Ronicky."

Ronicky sighed. "I thought we had her," he said. "Go on back to sleep.
I'll call you again if anything happens."

But nothing more happened that night, though even in the dull, ghost
hours of the early morning they did not relax their vigil. But all the
next day there was still no sign of Caroline Smith in the house across
the street; no face like hers ever appeared at the windows. Apparently
the place was a harmless rooming house of fairly good quality. Not a
sign of Caroline Smith appeared even during the second day. By this
time the nerves of the two watchers were shattered by the constant
strain, and the monotonous view from the front window was beginning to
madden them.

"It's proo