Coy Court, at which, twenty minutes later, he bade young Edwards stop the motor, proved to be one of those short, intersecting streets that start from the crowded thoroughfare of Halstead Street, run a squalid block or two east or west, and stop short against the sooty wall of a foundry or machine shop. No. 7, the third house on the left—like many of its neighbors, whose window’s bore Greek, Jewish, or Lithuanian signs—was given up in the basement to a store, but the upper floors were plainly devoted to lodgings.
The door was opened by a little girl of eight. “Does N. Meyan live here?” the psychologist asked. “And is he in?” Then, as the child nodded to the first inquiry and shook her head at the second: “When will he be back?”
“He comes to-night again, sure,” she said. “Perhaps sooner. But to-night, or to-morrow, he goes away for good. He have paid only till to-morrow.”
“I was right, you see, in saying we had need for haste,” Trant said to young Edwards. “But there is one thing we can try, even though he is not here. Let me have the picture you showed me this morning!”
He took from Winton’s hand the picture of Eva Silber, opened the leather case, and held it so the child could sec. “Do you know that lady?”
“Yes!” The child showed sudden interest. “It is Mr. Meyan’s wife.”
“His wife!” cried young Edwards. “So,” the psychologist said swiftly to the little girl, “you have seen this lady here?”
“She comes last night.” The child had grown suddenly loquacious. “Because she is coming, Mr. Meyan makes trouble that we should get a room ready for her. Already she has sent her things. And we get ready the room next to his. But because she wants still another room, she goes away last night again. Rooms come not so easy here; we have many people. But now we have another, so to-night she is coming again.”
“Does it now seem necessary for us to press this investigation further?” Cuthbert Edwards asked caustically. As he spoke, the sound of measured, heavy blows came to them down the dark stair apparently from the second floor of the building. The elder Edwards cried excitedly and triumphantly: “What is that? Listen! That man—Meyan, if it is Meyan—must be here; for that is the same hammering.”
“This is even better luck than we could have expected!” exclaimed the psychologist; and he slipped past the child and sped swiftly up the stairs, with his companions closely following. At the head of the flight he passed a stunted woman whose marked resemblance to the little girl below established her at once as mother and landlady, and a trembling old man. With the elder Edwards, Trant tore open door after door of the rooms upon that floor, and the floor above, before the woman could prevent him. The rooms were all empty.