Stimulated, therefore, by these occult hints and the lively prospect they introduced, the young man developed a clandestine emotion of weird anticipation, which he readily accredited to an unsuspected fitness for intrigue.
Gratz, in the meantime, having primed the young enthusiast, maintained an irritating silence, and when an hour had passed in this spiritless fashion Robert was electrified by the solitary word “Now!” from the lips of the enigmatical Gratz.
Unable to comprehend the significance of the subdued exclamation, Robert nevertheless followed the detective with confiding docility, and the pair hastened down a flight of stairs which conducted them to the main hallway.
From this Gratz proceeded to a door directly beneath the stairway which they had just traversed, and which opened upon another short series of steps that concluded in the cellar.
Descending these, the two hastened along the chill floor and presently paused by the main coal-bin in which the widow stored her fuel.
With an impressive injunction to silence, Gratz indicated the course which Robert was expected to pursue, and in the recess created by a flight of disused stairs the two secreted themselves.
It was pitch dark.
Neither of the watchers could see the other, and communication was only maintained by the reassuring pressure of the hand of the detective upon the arm of the excited Robert.
At last the latter ventured to inquire in a whisper what it was that Gratz expected to discover.
“The solution of the puzzle,” replied the other in the same tone.