"You want a whole lot of help, Captain," he gibed. "I thought you were Mother's Infant Prodigy. If you don't know, I'll tell you that door opens into a flat that's really part of this one, but the dame who lives there's gotten very proper notions about ladyhood, and we poor common folks aren't allowed to go in. She's just the obliging owner who lets us use this room to talk in--there's two entrances, and she keeps her own one private." "What name?" "Ask me again, Doc. We've never seen her." Storm reached to his hip and took out a compact wallet from which he selected a skeleton key of a type appropriate to the make of lock. He was successful at the first attempt, and the door creaked open on unoiled hinges. "Look after these gay birds, Teal," he ordered, and passed into the other flat. He found himself in a tastefully furnished sitting-room in the decoration of which the work of a woman's hand was evident. He only stopped to glance behind and under the chesterfield, and then went through the door which faced him. He arrived in a light airy double bedroom, and here again the signs of feminine habitation were not lacking; but this, too, was empty, though he peered under the bed and tentatively prodded the dresses which hung in the wardrobe in quest of a cached fugitive. He moved on to the bathroom, but discovered no one lurking there. After that futile search he recollected the telephone wire, and went back to trace it. It ran around the sitting-room and disappeared over the sill of a window. Leaning out, he saw that it hitched over a common porcelain insulator--from which it swept off to join the junction of other telephone wires. The result dissatisfied him, and he tracked the wire a second time, and on this journey he found that it was tapped very neatly, the secondary wires running under the carpet out of sight. Without compunction he shifted all the furniture which stood in the way, and rolled back the rugs, disclosing twin threads that crossed the floor. Following them up, he trailed them to a bookcase, and saw that they vanished into a hole trimly bored in the base.