While I was still pondering the matter, Jumbo issued forth again accompanied this time by a woman of his own age and type who might have been his wife. From the style of her dress I judged that they were off on an expedition, and my heart beat high. I made sure that they were really leaving the neighbourhood, by seeing them on an Amsterdam avenue car bound down-town.
Returning, I rang the bell in the vestibule several times to make sure there was no one else at home. The latch never clicked. I took advantage of some one's coming out to enter, and climbed the stairs until I came to the door marked 14. I knocked without receiving any answer. The doors of these flats are childishly easy to open unless the tenant puts on a special lock. In this case it had not been done. A calling card properly manipulated did the trick. I found myself inside.
I shall not go into a lengthy description of the place because there was nothing to describe. It was an ordinary flat of four small rooms, and from the look of it might have been outfitted complete by an installment house. There was nothing to suggest the taste of the owners, at least not until you came to the kitchen. Here there was an immense ice chest crammed with the choicest and most expensive eatables and drinkables. That was where their hearts lay! There was also a great store of fine liquors and cigars.
One bit of evidence rewarded my search, and only one. There were no letters, no papers, not a scrap of writing of any kind, except two lines on a piece of paper which I found under the blotting-pad of the cheap little desk by the sitting-room window. It had evidently slipped under and had been forgotten. A clever crook, of course, is no cleverer than an honest man. He is sure to make a little slip somewhere. In the two lines of writing I once more beheld the famous cryptogram. I pocketed it in high satisfaction.
I had got as far in my search as the imitation Japanese vases on the mantel-piece. I was peeping inside one of them when I heard a slight sound behind me. I turned around and beheld Jumbo swelling and purpling with silent rage in the doorway. I confess I was a good deal shaken by the apparition, though I managed to put down the vase with a good appearance of composure. He had stolen in as noiselessly as a cat. No matter how clear one's conscience may be, one is taken at a disadvantage discovered in the posture of a burglar.
For a while we looked at each other in silence. I cautiously reassured myself that my gun was safe in my pocket. I saw that Jumbo was making a tremendous effort to hold himself in, and I realised that he had more to fear from a showdown than I had. I began to breathe more easily. I had taken off my hat for coolness, and the wig was sewn inside the band. He obviously knew me. Perhaps it was as well for me. If he had supposed me an ordinary sneak thief he might have struck me down from behind with a blow of that mighty fist.
He began to swear at me thickly and softly. I remember wondering if he were going to have an apoplectic seizure, and hoping he wouldn't because it would spoil my case.
"I have you covered from my pocket," I warned him, in case his feelings got the better of his judgment.
"Yah! I'm not going to touch you!" he snarled. "I don't have to."
He got his rage under partial control. "Go ahead and finish looking," he said with a grim sort of humour.