e bushes screened me from the house, I arrived at a point
where the trail presented a new aspect: the distance between the
impresses measurably widened, signifying that my unknown caller had
broken into a run the instant the shrubbery concealed him from the
house. I quickened my pace.

The chase led me to a low stone wall marking the boundary of the
premises, across some vacant lots, to the intersection of two streets,
where the presence of a trolley line discouraged further pursuit.

On one of the corners, however, stood a grocery of the suburban
variety; and when I arrived hatless and without an overcoat, the grocer
came out, and eyed me curiously.

"Did you see anybody just ahead of me come this way?" I panted.

"Yep," returned the grocer. "Fellow came running across those lots not
five minutes ago. Three other fellows waiting for him on the corner
here."

"Three others!" I exclaimed. I had n't the least idea what it all
meant.

"Yep," said the grocer. "When he came there were four. The whole
bunch caught a down car. They was Chinymen."

I could do no more than vent my bewilderment in ejaculations.

"Chinamen!" I cried.

"Or Japs," remarked the grocer. "Come to think of it, they must 've
been Japs; they did n't have no pigtails."

Well, there was nothing else for me to do but turn round and go back
the way I had come. The grocer could tell me no more, and I was
completely stumped. Why four Chinese--or Japs--should be interested in
my movements in the Page house I could not in the least imagine.

But one thing was certain. I had skirted the border of some secret,
desperate enterprise. It challenged directly all my powers and
capabilities. I was irritated, nettled, not at my inability to fathom
the mystery at once, but at a species of mental numbness which
prevented me from even conjecturing a plausible theory to account for
the strange episode.

I strode along in a deep, moody revery, unconsciously scanning each in
turn of the absurdly small footprints. I vaulted the low wall into the
Page premises, and before I had fairly recovered my balance, I pounced
upon a folded sheet of paper which lay in the snow on one side of the
trail.

I unfolded it. The sheet bore a roughly sketched floor plan of some
house's interior. There was a wide hall, a square stair-well, and
three or four rooms. One of the rooms--the smallest--had been
designated by a cross.

All at once I uttered a little cry.