narrative.

The closet here supplied nothing of value to Garrison when he gave it a
brief inspection. At the end of the room was a door that stood
slightly ajar. It led to the next apartment--the room to which
Theodore had been assigned. Garrison soon discovered the electric
button and flooded the place with light.

The apartment was quite irregular. The far end had two windows,
overlooking the court at the rear--the hollow of the block. These were
both in an alcove, between two in-jutting partitions. One partition
was the common result of building a closet into the room. The other
was constructed to accommodate a staircase at the back of the house,
leading to the quarters below.

Disorder was again the rule, for a litter of papers, neckties, soiled
collars, and ends of cigarettes, with perfumes, toilet requisites, and
beer bottles seemed strewn promiscuously on everything capable of
receiving a burden.

Garrison tried the door that led to the staircase, and found it open.
The closet came next for inspection. Without expecting anything of
particular significance, Garrison drew open the door.

Like everything else in the Robinsons' realm, it was utterly
disordered. Glancing somewhat indifferently over its contents.
Garrison was about to close the door when his eye caught upon a gleam
of dull red, where a ray of light fell in upon a bit of color on the
floor.

He stopped, put his hand on the cloth, and drew forth a flimsy pair of
tights of carmine hue--part of the Mephistophelian costume that
Theodore had worn on the night of the party next door. With this in
his hand, and a clearer understanding of the house, with its staircase
at the rear. Garrison comprehended the ease with which Theodore had
played his role and gone from one house to the other without arousing
suspicion.

Encouraged to examine the closet further, he pawed around through the
garments hung upon the hooks, and presently struck his hand against a
solid obstacle projecting from the wall in the darkest corner, and
heard a hollow, resonant sound from the blow.

Removing half a dozen coats that hung concealingly massed in the place,
he almost uttered an exclamation of delight. There on the wall was a
small equipment telephone, one of the testing-boxes employed by the
linemen in their labors with which to "plug in" and communicate between
places where no regular 'phone is installed.

It was Theodore's private receiver, over which he co