“It’s got to be done,” he murmured decidedly. “There’s nothing else to it. I must find out who is in that room, and what is going on there. I might as well be a bump on a log, as sitting here.” Starting up, Patsy removed his overcoat and hat, placing them near by on the roof. He then crouched close to the edge, grasping each side of the plank as far out as he could reach. He found that it rested firmly on each end, and he then worked his hands still farther out, gradually letting himself down until he lay flat upon it, with his feet on the garage roof and his head within eight inches of the house window, his eyes directly in line with the lower edge of the slightly raised curtain. The beam of light from within fell full on his face. It looked unusually pale, but never more set and determined. Patsy had reasoned that it might be more difficult to return than to get out there on his narrow support. But he had resolved to cross that bridge when he came to it. It was enough for him, just then, that he had accomplished his immediate object. He now could see plainly into the room and also hear the voices of its occupants. He took them in visually with a single swift glance--five persons. One was a brawny Irishman in his shirt sleeves. He was seated near the stove and smoking a clay pipe. Another was a corpulent, red-faced woman, whose garments denoted that she was the mistress of the house, as the other appeared to be its master. “Hogan and his wife,” thought Patsy. “I’ve seen him driving a taxi, too, and his wife most likely runs the little store.” Patsy afterward learned that he was right. A third person was Annette Levine, divested of her outside garments. A fourth was a dark, finely formed woman in the twenties, whom Patsy instantly recognized as a familiar character in the Tenderloin, one Lucy Devoll, a girl formerly intimate with the Vantoon sisters, then in prison for their complicity in two of the crimes committed by Stuart Floyd. The fifth person was none other than the notorious crook himself--Stuart Floyd. He looked white and pinched, and there was an abnormal glitter in his eyes that told of feverish anxiety and physical consumption, of the horrible price paid for traveling the downward path. “Eureka!” thought Patsy, when he discovered these worthies. “I’m in right, if I can only stick here. If worse comes, I can wriggle around and drop into the yard. It’s not more than ten feet.” Patsy lost nothing that was said in the room while these few thoughts passed through his mind. Stuart Floyd was talking, addressing the girl who had entered only a few minutes before. “What type of man is he, Nan, the one who called this morning?” he asked. “A decent-looking, muscular man, smooth shaved,” said Nan Levine, as she was called. “He’s about medium complexion.” “It might have been Chick Carter,” said Floyd, with knit brows. “You are sure it wasn’t Nick himself?”