throw two notes from the window, did she not throw them out by the
dozen? If she were able to reach a window, opening on the street,
why did she not call for help? Why did she not, by hurling out
every small article the room contained, by screams, by breaking the
window-panes, attract a crowd, and, through it, the police? That
she had not done so seemed to show that only at rare intervals was
she free from restraint, or at liberty to enter the front room that
opened on the street. Would it be equally difficult, Ford asked
himself, for one in the street to communicate with her? What signal
could he give that would draw an answering signal from the girl?

Standing at the corner, hidden by the pillars of a portico, the
water dripping from his rain-coat, Ford gazed long and anxiously at
the blank windows of the three houses. Like blind eyes staring into
his, they told no tales, betrayed no secret. Around him the
commonplace life of the neighborhood proceeded undisturbed.
Somewhere concealed in the single row of houses a girl was
imprisoned, her life threatened; perhaps even at that moment she
was facing her death. While, on either side, shut from her by the
thickness only of a brick wall, people were talking, reading,
making tea, preparing the evening meal, or, in the street below,
hurrying by, intent on trivial errands. Hansom cabs, prowling in
search of a fare, passed through the street where a woman was being
robbed of a fortune, the drivers occupied only with thoughts of a
possible shilling; a housemaid with a jug in her hand and a shawl
over her bare head, hastened to the near-by public- house; the
postman made his rounds, and delivered comic postal-cards; a
policeman, shedding water from his shining cape, halted, gazed
severely at the sky, and, unconscious of the crime that was going
forward within the sound of his own footsteps, continued stolidly