village, way up in the mountains
perhaps, where comforts are few and secrecy an impossibility. Comforts
have become indispensable to my threescore years and ten, and
secrecy--well, if ever there was an affair where one needs to go softly,
it is this one; as you will see if you will allow me to give you the
facts of the case as known at Headquarters to-day."

I bowed, trying not to show my surprise or my extreme satisfaction. Mr.
Gryce assumed his most benignant aspect (always a dangerous one with
him), and began his story.

II

I AM TEMPTED

"Some ninety miles from here, in a more or less inaccessible region,
there is a small but interesting village, which has been the scene of so
many unaccountable disappearances that the attention of the New York
police has at last been directed to it. The village, which is at least
two miles from any railroad, is one of those quiet, placid little spots
found now and then among the mountains, where life is simple, and crime,
to all appearance, an element so out of accord with every other
characteristic of the place as to seem a complete anomaly. Yet crime, or
some other hideous mystery almost equally revolting, has during the last
five years been accountable for the disappearance in or about this
village of four persons of various ages and occupations. Of these, three
were strangers and one a well-known vagabond accustomed to tramp the
hills and live on the bounty of farmers' wives. All were of the male
sex, and in no case has any clue ever come to light as to their fate.
That is the matter as it stands before the police to-day."

"A serious affair," I remarked. "Seems to me I have read of such things
in novels. Is there a tumbled-down old inn in the vicinity where beds
are made up over trap-doors?"

His smile was a mild protest against my flippancy.

"I have visited the town myself. There is no inn there, but a
comfortable hotel of the most matter-of-fact sort, kept by the frankest
and most open-minded of landlords. Besides, these disappearances, as a
rule, did not take place at night, but in broad daylight. Imagine this
street at noon. It is a short one, and you know every house on it, and
you think you know every lurking-place. You see a man enter it at one
end and you expect him to issue from it at the other. But suppose he
never does. More than that, suppose he is never heard of again, and that
this thing should happen in this one street four times during five
y