Having thus reassured myself, I made my way toward the dimly lit doorway, the floorboards creaking noisily in the tomb-like silence of the corridor. As I neared the bedchamber, however, my heart was once again seized by a sudden, sickening qualm of superstitious dread.

Drawing to a halt several feet from the doorway, I paused to reconsider the wisdom of my present course of action. Perhaps I had behaved too precipitously in choosing to return to Montague’s apartment without first apprising the police of my recent discovery. For a moment, I gave serious thought to abandoning my enterprise and repairing, instead, to the headquarters of Captain Russell. Before I could act on this impulse, however, a monitory voice within my head reminded me of the well-founded basis for my original decision: to wit, the strange, thus-far-inexplicable—but nonetheless verifiable—connection between the victims of the still-unknown madman and my own sainted mother!

Manfully subduing the spasm of unease which had momentarily gripped me, I traversed the remaining distance to the doorway of the bedchamber, and—after drawing a deep breath—boldly stepped across the threshold.

A single glance assured me that there was no one in the room. It was now unmistakably dear that I had merely imagined the lurking presence of another human being. Releasing my breath in a long sigh of relief, I stood in the center of the floor and slowly gazed around.

The condition of the chamber was different in certain notable regards from the way it had been several hours earlier, when I had last viewed it. A number of these changes were distinctly for the better. Someone—perhaps the neighbor woman Mrs. Purviance, who habitually performed such menial services for the incapacitated tenant—had evidently been enlisted to dispose of the more objectionable detritus. The loathsome, vermin-infested food scraps had been removed from the table, and the noisome receptacle at the side of the bed had been emptied of its excessively disagreeable contents.

The window, too, had been opened several inches, evidently for the purpose of ventilation: a circumstance which accounted, not only for the improved atmosphere of the room, but also for the gentle movements of the moth-eaten window-curtains, whose faint rustlings I had detected from the hallway.

In spite of these alterations, however, the overall ambience of the room was, if anything, even more deplorable than it had been previously In their concerted effort to uncover some due as to the missing mans whereabouts, the trio of investigators—Captain Russell, Officer Gariton, and Colonel Crodcett—had left the chamber in a state of near-shambles. The bureau drawers had been ransacked—the bedclothes virtually shredded—the piled newspapers scattered everywhere across the floor.