self. "Some loiterer. He cannot be connected with the
Estabrooks' affairs."

Yet, for some reason, feeling that I was watched, I determined to walk
away again, and as I went I looked along the ground in the manner of one
who has lost something. The cross-street was near and I turned it. I
thought after a moment or two of waiting under the wall of the corner
residence that I heard receding footbeats on the pavement; therefore,
having allowed a minute or two to pass, I retraced my steps. The figure
was no longer anywhere in sight. Holding my hat so that the ugly gusts
of cold wind would not blow it away, I walked up the white steps of the
Estabrook home and pressed the electric button which projected from a
bronze disk. This disk, so the sense of touch indicated, had at one time
been one of those Chinese carved metal mirrors and was now set into the
stone. I remember how it spoke to me of the extents to which the
metropolitan architects and decorators will go to appeal to the whims
and pretensions of the rich, who, after all, are out of the same mould
as other men so obscure and wretched that the money spent for such a
capricious ornament would support a family of them for six months.
Perhaps the irony of it is that, no matter how much wealth may protect
one from the others, it can never protect one from himself. And then--I
pressed the button again.

There were silk curtains within the long heavy glass panels on either
side of the door, but had a light been lit within I could have seen it.
The whole house, however, was dark, and only by chance did I catch the
sly movement of one of the curtains and the glint of an eye, peeping out
at me. Whoever its owner might be, he or she had crept across the tiled
vestibule silently and was now behind the outer door conducting a covert
investigation.

"An odd procedure for a house of a respectable, conservative family,"
said I to myself, and without hesitating I rang again.

A light in the ceiling of the vestibule glowed forth immediately and I
heard the movement of heavy metal locks and latches; the door swung back
and I found myself standing before a middle-aged woman dressed in the
black-and-white garb of well-trained servants.

This woman had a face that one may find sometimes among veteran nuns--a
strong and kindly face, patient and self-subjugated--the face of the
convent. But, of course, old family serving-women may have this same
expression, for they too are nuns in a se