to find that out. You saw me go
into the court and look up. That was to see if his window was lighted.
Well, it wasn't."

George felt non-plussed.

"But surely," said he, "the gentleman named Brotherson doesn't live
here."

"The inventor does."

"Oh!"

"And--but I will explain later."

The suppressed excitement contained in these words made George stare.
Indeed, he had been wondering for some time at the manner of the
detective which showed a curious mixture of several opposing emotions.
Now, the fellow was actually in a tremble of hope or impatience;--and,
not content with listening, he peered every few minutes down the well of
the staircase, and when he was not doing that, tramped from end to end
of the narrow passage-way separating the head of the stairs from the
door he had pointed out, like one to whom minutes were hours. All this
time he seemed to forget George who certainly had as much reason as
himself for finding the time long. But when, after some half hour of
this tedium and suspense, there rose from below the faint clatter of
ascending footsteps, he remembered his meek companion and beckoning
him to one side, began a studied conversation with him, showing him a
note-book in which he had written such phrases as these:

Don't look up till he is fairly in range with the light.

There's nothing to fear; he doesn't know either of us.

If it is a face you have seen before;--if it is the one we are expecting
to see, pull your necktie straight. It's a little on one side.

These rather startling injunctions were read by George, with no very
perceptible diminution of the uneasiness which it was only natural for
him to feel at the oddity of his position. But only the demand last made
produced any impression on him. The man they were waiting for was no
further up than the second floor, but instinctively George's hand
had flown to his necktie, and he was only stopped from its premature
re-arrangement by a warning look from Sweetwater.

"Not unless you know him," whispered the detective; and immediately
launched out into an easy talk about some totally different business
which George neither understood, nor was expected to, I dare say.

Suddenly the steps below paused, and George heard Sweetwater draw in his
breath in irrepressible dismay. But they were immediately resumed, and
presently the head and shoulders of a workingman of uncommon proportions
appeared in sight on the stairway.

George cast him a ke