If you will bear with me for just one moment, sir." With this polite request, the old man retired to the rear of the shop and called out to some one upstairs.

A woman's voice answered.

The brief conversation which followed was in a tongue unknown to King.
"My niece will keep shop, sir, while I am out," Spantz explained, taking his hat from a peg behind the door.

Truxton could scarcely restrain a smile as he glanced over his queer little old guest.

He looked eighty but was as sprightly as a man of forty.