k.

"Both."

"Any one else?"

"No. A boy drove away the buggy and has not come back. Sawbones keeps no
girl."

"Is the child quiet? Has there been no alarm?"

"Not a breath."

"No cops in the neighborhood? No spies around?"

"Not one. We've got it all this time. But--"

"Hush!"

"There's nobody."

"Yes, the doctor; he's fastening up his house. I must hasten; nothing
would induce me to let that innocent remain under his roof all night."

"It's not the windows he is at."

"What then?"

"The door, the big front door."

"The--"

"Yes."

I gave my partner a surprised look, undoubtedly lost in the darkness,
and drew a step nearer the house.

"It's just the same old gloom-box," I exclaimed, and paused for an
instant to mark the changes which had taken place in the surroundings.
They were very few and I turned back to fix my eye on the front door
where a rattling sound could be heard, as of some one fingering the
latch. It was this door which formed the peculiarity of the house. In
itself it was like any other that was well-fashioned and solid, but it
opened upon space--that is, if it was ever opened, which I doubted. The
stoop and even the railing which had once guarded it, had all been
removed, leaving a bare front, with this inhospitable entrance shut
against every one who had not the convenience for mounting to it by a
ladder. There was another way in, but this was round on one side, and
did not present itself to the eye unless one approached from the west
end of the street; so that to half the passers-by the house looked like
a deserted one till they came abreast of the flagged path which led to
the office door. As the windows had never been unclosed in my day and
were not now, I took it for granted that they had remained thus
inhospitably shut during all the years of my absence, which certainly
offered but little encouragement to a man bent on an errand which would
soon take him into those dismal precincts.

"What goes on behind those shuttered windows?" thought I. "I know of one
thing, but what else?" The one thing was the counting of money and the
arranging of innumerable gold pieces on the great top of a baize-covered
table in what I should now describe as the back parlor. I remembered how
he used to do it. I caught him at it once, having crept up one windy
night from my little room off the office to see what kept the doctor up
so late.

As I now stood listening in the dark street to those s