We were sitting in a sort of cubicle against the wall, shut off from the others like it by the high wooden backs of the seats. Each table was lit by a softly shaded electric globe, which threw little light beyond the table, and the rest of the room was but dimly lit.
In the middle of our conversation about our house-to-house wire, I looked up to order our coffee, and suddenly saw that the soft-footed Chinese boy was standing quite close to Moore, although beyond the end of the seat, so that I could only see his elbow. We had spoken in very low tones and I thought nothing about it at the time. But I had cause to remember that Chinese boy later on.
A few moments later we left the restaurant separately and made our way by separate routes to Moore’s new rooms, to begin work on our private wire. It seemed like making defensive preparations in advance before declaring war. For even after Moore’s warning I failed to realize fully that, with our murderous visitor that night and the subsequent search of my papers, if such it was, war had already been declared—and not by us.
Chapter V.
Our First Clew
The house in which Moore had taken his rooms was of the ordinary brown-stone type and had once been occupied, presumably, by a single family. Now, owing to changes in the neighborhood and ever-mounting rents, it had been split up into apartments.
The basement was occupied, he told me, by a grocer, his wife and two children. The first floor served as office and home for a young doctor, while the second floor had been subdivided into two smaller apartments of three rooms each, with a bathroom common to both, Of these two, the front apartment belonged to a returned soldier and his somewhat shrill-voiced French bride. Moore had rented the back part of this floor, consisting of a bedroom, a small kitchen and a living-room. The third floor was unoccupied, but was similar in design to the second.
The house was a large square one, each apartment on the second floor being self-contained and well-lighted, with the common bathroom between, lit only by a small shaft and skylight above. The door to Moore’s rooms was just at the head of the stairs and opened into his living-room. This room looked out on to the back garden, so called, as did his smaller bedroom beyond. His kitchen was the same width as the hall and was the continuation of it, but opened into his living-room and not into the hall, so that the rooms had a single door into the hall. This was fitted with a Yale lock.
The common bathroom was, of course, the difficulty and was probably the reason why he had found the rooms empty. With the somewhat embarrassing sociability of some old southern and a few old New York houses, this bathroom had three doors, one into the hall, one into the front flat, and one at the back, into what was now Moore’s bedroom. Of these, only the door into the hall was now in use, the other two being nailed up.
There was only one door-bell to the house, which rang in the basement, and for a small monthly gratuity the grocer’s wife or one of her numerous children opened the door for all visitors. The tenants had keys.
Moore got home first and was waiting at the front door of the house to let me in. He ushered me proudly into his living-room, furnished in seedy-looking plush and china ornaments that looked as if they had been manufactured by an absent-minded anarchist in his moments of relaxation. The door was open into his bedroom beyond, and the first thing I noticed was a lot of wire lying on the floor in there.