It is rarely that you find a detective speaking of any point in the case he is investigating, except the point immediately at issue. But Freyberger’s object just now was to inspect Kolbecker’s room; he had no search warrant, time was precious. He wanted to make this Gyde case his own, and the quickest way to obtain access to the place desired was by bringing the woman in line with himself and not into opposition. “So, you see,” he went on, “I have come here for no idle purpose or to waste your time; you will be called, no doubt, as a witness. I want to see this Mr Kolbecker’s room. Of course, without a search warrant, I have no legal right to enter it; but it will take me some hours to obtain one, and that will mean the loss of precious time. You wish to assist the course of justice, I am sure.” “Oh,” said the woman, “you may see his room, and welcome, if that is all; but there’s nothing much to see, for he took all his things with him when he went to Cumberland.” “Well,” said the other, pleasantly, “we will go up and see what is to be seen—if you will lead the way.” The landlady led the way up three flights of stairs, Freyberger noting everything as he followed. He knew the house, though he had never been in it before; knew it, that is to say, by its species. It was a lower, middle-class lodging house of the Bohemian type, a place infested by broken-down or unfledged artists, second-rate musicians, young foreigners of more or less talent living on ten shillings a week and hope; a place where anything might occur, in an artistic-Bohemian way, from a suicide to the construction of an oratorio. The woman opened the door of the top floor front. “This is the room,” she said. It was very bare; a bed stood in one corner, and a chest of drawers, with a looking-glass on top of it, in the window. A table stood in the middle, covered with an old red cloth. There were two cane-bottomed chairs, and on the carpetless floor in the corner, diagonally opposite to the bed, an old horseskin covered trunk. Over the mantelpiece hung a cheap oleograph. Freyberger stood in the doorway before entering. He seemed trying to catch, so to speak, the expression of the room; to surprise it suddenly out of some secret. But there was nothing at all to tell of the personality of the individual who had last occupied it. Everything was in order. In a room just like this, some months ago, two chairs drawn close together at a table, a hairpin lying on the floor between them, and the envelope of a letter stuck in the support of the looking-glass to keep it straight, had gived him a clue that had brought a forger and his mistress to justice. But there was nothing here of any description to build a clue upon. He inspected the floor narrowly, then the grate; then he lifted the lid of the trunk, it was empty. The two top drawers of the chest of drawers in the window were empty; but the large middle drawer was heavy, and difficult to pull out.