Miss Janet Payson was seriously startled about ten o’clock the following morning, when a somewhat insistent knock sounded on the door of her apartments in the Shelby House.
The same was true of her companion, who had entered about half an hour before, after leaving his touring car in a neighboring street, in charge of a chauffeur and another man, as if their mission was one that required at least a moderate degree of caution.
Janet Payson’s companion was the man with a Vandyke beard—but he had removed it and slipped it into his pocket since entering.
The removal of the disguise did not improve him. It had served to hide a thin-lipped, sinister mouth, a bulldog jaw and chin, and the hard lines of a desperate and determined face.
That he was all that his face denoted, moreover, appeared in the celerity with which he whipped out a revolver from his hip pocket the instant the knock interrupted the subdued conversation with the woman. At the same time he muttered quickly:
“What’s that? Who the devil can that be?”
Janet Payson turned pale, or as pale as the tinge of rouge in her cheeks permitted, and she laid her finger on her lips, then pointed to the adjoining bedroom.
“Keep quiet, Jeff,” she whispered. “I’ll find out.”
The man, Jefferson Murdock by name, seized his hat and tiptoed into the bedroom and set the door ajar. Then he waited and listened, revolver in hand.
The knock sounded again on the hall door.