Whom he should meet at the top of his climb was problematic. If it was the blond-mopped man--Well, they both might be taking chances.
A moment did he pause before the door of the fourth floor front. Suppose a maid attended his knock, for whom should he ask? "Miss Lauderdale" might not be known in the house--mention of the name might betray an incognito. Reminding himself, however, that a servant was the difficulty least likely to be encountered in that tenement, he knuckled up his hand and knocked.
His first rap did not bring response; had to be repeated more peremptorily. He could hear low voices within. Then there was silence. Perhaps the occupants of flats did not answer unexpected knocks. His hand was fisted for a third when the knob turned and the door opened a crack.
No face appeared; nothing but a voice--a woman's, hard and impatient.
Pape was returned to the quandary of the maid possibility. Before he could decide what to answer the suction of wind from the hall drew around the edge of the door a fluttery bit of black skirt.
Curiosity, surprise or exasperation ruled her--perhaps a combination of the three. Her young-white face in its old-black bonnet followed the skirt around the door edge, high as his own and so close that her breath, warm and sweet as a summer zephyr off a clover field, blew upon his cheek.
"_You_?" she gasped, as before, out under the trees.
"Again," he finished for her with the briefest of bows.
She narrowed the crack and moved across it, evidently to protect the room from his inspection. Not exactly a "welcome to our happy home" was her next offering, although in her natural tones.
"So you followed me home last night, after all! How dared you? What is the meaning of your espionage?"
His courage was lit by the blaze of her look.
"There's a particular meaning to it that I hope you won't find so unwelcome. I've whizzed hereward to inform you that a gang of grave-diggers are exercising their muscles 'neath the shade of the sheltering poplars where you and Kicko were planting bones last evening."
He felt gratified at the importance of his news, as shown by its effect on her. Her lips paled as they parted. The pansy-black irises widened within the blue of her eyes in her concentrated stare. Lines lengthened her face more suitably to the poke of the bonnet that framed it.