Having applied an ear to the keyhole, he remained motionless for the space of sixty seconds. After that he tried the door. Finding it locked, he produced a prodigious bunch of keys. He studied them critically for a moment, and then selecting three, applied the first of them to the keyhole.
With a grunt of disapproval, he discarded this to try the second. No better result. The third did the trick. The lock clicked, the door swung open. More silent than a mouse, the man slipped inside.
“Always,” he whispered, “it is the third one.”
Sitting down on the first step he removed his shoes. Having tied the strings together, he threw them over his shoulder. After that, with no sound at all save the occasional creak of a board that roused him to silent profanity, he ascended the seven flights of stairs.
Arrived at the last landing, he paused to listen. Like those of certain wild animals, his ears appeared to rise to the sound that came from within.
Some one was talking; yet, when the youth had entered he had found no one there. The room had no other entrance. No words could be distinguished. Still, by the manner in which the speaker went steadily, endlessly on and on, one might have judged that he was deeply in earnest.
The “Spy”—for such was the name given to him long ago by the underworld—listened at the keyhole but for a single moment. Then, cocking his head on one side, he twisted his face into a smile that was a horrible thing to see and uttered a sound half aloud:
“Uh huh! Uh huh!”
The sound coming through his nose resembled nothing quite so much as the grunt of a satisfied pig. He repeated it once again:
“Uh huh!”