At four o'clock Mr. Holcombe came to my kitchen, rubbing his hands
together. He had a pasteboard tube in his hand about a foot long, with
an arrangement of small mirrors in it. He said it was modeled after
the something or other that is used on a submarine, and that he and
the paper-hanger had fixed a place for it between his floor and the
ceiling of Mr. Ladley's room, so that the chandelier would hide it
from below. He thought he could watch Mr. Ladley through it; and as it
turned out, he could.

"I want to find his weak moment," he said excitedly. "I want to know
what he does when the door is closed and he can take off his mask. And
I want to know if he sleeps with a light."

"If he does," I replied, "I hope you'll let me know, Mr. Holcombe. The
gas bills are a horror to me as it is. I think he kept it on all last
night. I turned off all the other lights and went to the cellar. The
meter was going around."

"Fine!" he said. "Every murderer fears the dark. And our friend of the
parlor bedroom is a murderer, Mrs. Pitman. Whether he hangs or not,
he's a murderer."

The mirror affair, which Mr. Holcombe called a periscope, was put in
that day and worked amazingly well. I went with him to try it out, and
I distinctly saw the paper-hanger take a cigarette from Mr. Ladley's
case and put it in his pocket. Just after that, Mr. Ladley sauntered
into the room and looked at the new paper. I could both see and hear
him. It was rather weird.

"God, what a wall-paper!" he said.