and profitable for me to
know.

Luckily I made no such mistake this evening. I rose and looked out, and
though I was far from realizing it at the time, took, by so doing, my
first step in a course of inquiry which has ended----

But it is too soon to speak of the end. Rather let me tell you what I
saw when I parted the curtains of my window in Gramercy Park, on the
night of September 17, 1895.

Not much at first glance, only a common hack drawn up at the neighboring
curb-stone. The lamp which is supposed to light our part of the block is
some rods away on the opposite side of the street, so that I obtained
but a shadowy glimpse of a young man and woman standing below me on the
pavement. I could see, however, that the woman--and not the man--was
putting money into the driver's hand. The next moment they were on the
stoop of this long-closed house, and the coach rolled off.

It was dark, as I have said, and I did not recognize the young
people,--at least their figures were not familiar to me; but when, in
another instant, I heard the click of a night-key, and saw them, after a
rather tedious fumbling at the lock, disappear from the stoop, I took it
for granted that the gentleman was Mr. Van Burnam's eldest son Franklin,
and the lady some relative of the family; though why this, its most
punctilious member, should bring a guest at so late an hour into a house
devoid of everything necessary to make the least exacting visitor
comfortable, was a mystery that I retired to bed to meditate upon.

I did not succeed in solving it, however, and after some ten minutes had
elapsed, I was settling myself again to sleep when I was re-aroused by a
fresh sound from the quarter mentioned. The door I had so lately heard
shut, opened again, and though I had to rush for it, I succeeded in
getting to my window in time to catch a glimpse of the departing figure
of the young man hurrying away towards Broadway. The young woman was not
with him, and as I realized that he had left her behind him in the
great, empty house, without apparent light and certainly without any
companion, I began to question if this was like Franklin Van Burnam. Was
it not more in keeping with the recklessness of his more easy-natured
and less reliable brother, Howard, who, some two or three years back,
had married a young wife of no very satisfactory antecedents, and who,
as I had heard, had been ostracized by the family in consequence?

Whichever of the two it wa