to his own, one of those natures who once having taken up a trail
cannot rest until they reach their goal. He looked for a few
moments in satisfaction at the assistant he had found by such
chance, then he turned and hastened down the stairs again.

"We're going to that house?" asked Amster when they were down in
the street. Muller nodded.

Without hesitation the two men made their way through a tangle of
dingy, uninteresting alleys, between modem tenements, until about
ten minutes later they stood before an old three-storied building,
which had a frontage of four windows on the street. "This is our
place," said the detective, looking up at the tall, handsome
gateway and the rococo carvings that ornamented the front of this
decaying dwelling. It was very evidently of a different age and
class from those about it.

Muller had already raised his hand to pull the bell, when he stopped
and let it sink again. His eye caught sight of a placard pasted up
on the wall of the next house, and already half torn off by the wind.
The detective walked over, and raising the placard with his cane,
read the words on it. "That's right," he said to himself. Amster
gave a look on the paper. But he could not connect the contents of
the notice with the case of the kidnapped lady, and he shook his
head in surprise when Muller turned to him with the words: "The lady
we are looking for is not insane." On the paper was announced in
large letters that a reward would be offered to the finder of a red
and green parrot which had escaped from a neighbouring house.

Muller rang the bell and they had to wait some few minutes before