an came up to them, looming out of the fog as suddenly as a
spectre, and nodded to Caldew.

"Nothing doing," he briefly announced. "I've watched the place ever
since, but he hasn't been in."

"All right," said Caldew. "You can leave it to me now. I shan't need you
any longer. Good night!"

"Good night, and good night to you, Mr. Colwyn," the policeman
responded, turning with a smile to the private detective. "I didn't
recognize you at first because of the fog. I didn't know you were in
this job."

"And I hope that you won't mention it, now that you do know," interposed
Caldew hastily.

"Not me. I'm not one of the talking sort." The policeman nodded again in
a friendly fashion, and disappeared down the side street.

The two detectives stood there, watching, screened from passing
observation in the deep doorway of an empty shop. The flare which swung
in the doorway opposite permitted them to take stock of everybody who
entered the lodging-house in quest of a bed. By its light they could
even decipher beneath the large sign of "Good Beds, Eightpence," a
smaller sign which added, "Or Two Persons, a Shilling," which, by its
careful wording, seemed to hint that those entranced in Love's young
dream might seek the seclusion of the bowers within unhindered by
awkward questions of conventional morality, and, by its triumphant
vindication of the time-worn sentiment that love conquers all, tended to
reassure democracy that the difference between West End hotels and
Islington lodging-houses was one of price only.

But the visitors to the lodging-house that night suggested thraldom to
less romantic tyrants than Cupid. Drink, disease and want were the
masters of the ill-favoured men who shambled within at intervals,
thrusting the price of a bed through a pigeon-hole at the entrance,
receiving a dirty ticket in exchange. These transactions, and the faces
of the frowzy lodgers were clearly visible to the watchers across the
road, but none of the men resembled Nepcote. Shortly after ten o'clock
raindrops began to fall sluggishly through the fog, and, as if that were
the signal for closing, the figure of a man appeared in the
lodging-house doorway and proceeded to extinguish the flare.

"We had better go over," Caldew said.

They walked across the oozing road, and he accosted the man in the
doorway.

"You're closing early to-night," he observed.

The man desisted from his occupation to stare at them. He was an
ill-favoured