chaussée; for the sixth-floor flat possessed one invaluable advantage—a window on a level with the roof of the adjoining building.
Two minutes' examination sufficed to prove that here at least the Pack had not trespassed….
Five minutes later Lanyard picked the common lock of a door opening from the roof of an apartment house on the farthest corner of the block, found his way downstairs, tapped the door of the conciergerie, chanted that venerable Open Sesame of Paris, "Cordon, s'il vous plait!" and was made free of the street by a worthy guardian too sleepy to challenge the identity of this late-departing guest.
He walked three blocks, picked up a taxicab, and in ten minutes more was set down at the Gare des Invalides.
Passing through the station without pause, he took to the streets afoot, following the boulevard St. Germain to the rue du Bac; a brief walk up this time-worn thoroughfare brought him to the ample, open and unguarded porte-cochére of a court walled with beetling ancient tenements.
When he had made sure that the courtyard was deserted, Lanyard addressed himself to a door on the right; which to his knock swung promptly ajar with a clicking latch. At the same time the adventurer whipped from beneath his cloak a small black velvet visor and adjusted it to mask the upper half of his face. Then entering a narrow and odorous corridor, whose obscurity was emphasized by a lonely guttering candle, he turned the knob of the first door and walked into a small, ill-furnished room.
A spare-bodied young man, who had been reading at a
