THE TIGHTENING COIL Henry Keenan, of New York, had leisurely finished his cigar, and had as leisurely glanced through all the three-day-old London papers.

He had even puzzled, for another half-hour, over the pages of a _Tribuna_.
Then, after gazing in an idle and listless manner about the empty and uninviting hotel reading-room, he decided that it was time for him to go up to his room.

He made his leisurely way to the lift, ascended to the fourth floor, stepped out, and drew his room-key from his pocket, as he walked down the hall, in the same idle and listless manner.
As he turned the corner the listlessness went from his face, and a change came in his languid yet ever-restless and covert eyes.
For a young woman was standing before his door, trying to fit a key to the lock.

This, he decided as he paused three paces from her and studied her back, she was doing quite openly, with no slightest sense of secrecy.

She wore a plumed hat, and a dark cloth tailor-made suit that was unmistakably English.