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. “What’s all that—the telephone?” I asked. “Yes, I have put one instrument in already, and I have the batteries and the instrument for your end. We’ll put that in later. I’m a bit of an electrician and the job was an easy one. As for my own instrument, I’m going to keep it in my clothes closet and keep the closet locked, you see. It will have a buzzer, but not a loud one, so that you can get me when I’m here, but mostly I imagine I’ll be calling you up. You see, I’ll have to have a fashionable studio or something somewhere, to carry out my part of the dilettante lounge lizard. This place would never do as my official residence from a social point of view. But it ought to be handy as an ‘earth’ perhaps.” “What’s the idea of keeping it in the closet?” I asked. “Well, some one will have to clean the room, and I don’t want some estimable cleaning woman messing about with it. Trust nobody is our motto, old boy.” “And my end of it?” “Oh, that doesn’t matter so much. You can trust Larry, can’t you? We’ll put it in your bedroom, and you can tell Larry not to let any one else in there. How’s that?” “That’s all right I should think,” I told him. “Now, suppose we go over to my rooms and finish the job on the other instrument, and then we can do the wiring later, when all’s quiet?”