landlord would but receive an open instead of veiled
intimation that the young deputy had his eye on him and was not to be
fooled by appearances and the lack of evidence to support his honest
convictions.

They had done little more than he had suggested to make Number 3
habitable. As the door swung open under Jake's impatient hand, the
half-lighted hollow of the almost empty room gaped uninvitingly before
them, with just a wooden-bottomed chair and a rickety table added to the
small cot-bed which had been almost its sole furnishing when he saw it
last. The walls, bare as his hand, stretched without relief from
baseboard to ceiling, and the floor from door to window showed an
unbroken expanse of unpainted boards, save for the narrow space between
chair and table, where a small rug had been laid. A cheerless outlook
for a tired man, but it seemed to please Hammersmith. There was paper
and ink on the table, and the lamp which he took care to examine held
oil enough to last till morning. With a tray of eatables, this ought to
suffice, or so his manner conveyed, and Jake, who had already supplied
the eatables, was backing slowly out when his eye, which seemingly
against his will had been travelling curiously up and down the walls,
was caught by that of Hammersmith, and he plunged from the room, with a
flush visible even in that half light.

It was a trivial circumstance, but it fitted in with Hammersmith's trend
of thought at the moment, and when the man was gone he stood for several
minutes with his own eye travelling up and down those dusky walls in an
inquiry which this distant inspection did not seem thoroughly to
satisfy, for in another instant he had lifted a glass of water from the
tray and, going to the nearest wall, began to moisten the paper at one
of the edges. When it was quite wet, he took out his penknife, but
before using it, he looked behind him, first at the door, and then at
the window. The door was shut; the window seemingly guarded by an
outside blind; but the former was not locked, and the latter showed,
upon closer inspection, a space between the slats which he did not like.
Crossing to the door, he carefully turned the key, then proceeding to
the window, he endeavoured to throw up the sash in order to close the
blinds more effectually. But he found himself balked in the attempt. The
cord had been cut and the sash refused to move under his hand.

Casting a glance of mingled threat and sarcasm out int