e door to
Daughtry's rooms ajar.

* * * * *

But Walter Merritt Emory was not the only base one abased by desire of
possession of Michael. In a deep leather chair, his feet resting in
another deep leather chair, at the Indoor Yacht Club, Harry Del Mar
yielded to the somniferous digestion of lunch, which was for him
breakfast as well, and glanced through the first of the early editions of
the afternoon papers. His eyes lighted on a big headline, with a brief
five lines under it. His feet were instantly drawn down off the chair
and under him as he stood up erect upon them. On swift second thought,
he sat down again, pressed the electric button, and, while waiting for
the club steward, reread the headline and the brief five lines.

In a taxi, and away, heading for the Barbary Coast, Harry Del Mar saw
visions that were golden. They took on the semblance of yellow, twenty-
dollar gold pieces, of yellow-backed paper bills of the government
stamping of the United States, of bank books, and of rich coupons ripe
for the clipping--and all shot through the flashings of the form of a
rough-coated Irish terrier, on a galaxy of brilliantly-lighted stages,
mouth open, nose upward to the drops, singing, ever singing, as no dog
had ever been known to sing in the world before.

* * * * *

Cocky himself was the first to discover that the door was ajar, and was
looking at it with speculation (if by "speculation" may be described the
mental processes of a bird, in some mysterious way absorbing into its
consciousness a fresh impression of its environment and preparing to act,
or not act, according to which way the fresh impression modifies its
conduct). Humans do this very thing, and some of them call it "free
will." Cocky, staring at the open door, was in just the stage of
determining whether or not he should more closely inspect that crack of
exit to the wider world, which inspection, in turn, would determine
whether or not he should venture out through the crack, when his eyes
beheld the eyes of the second discoverer staring in.

The eyes were bestial, yellow-green, the pupils dilating and narrowing
with sharp swiftness as they sought about among the lights and glooms of
the room. Cocky knew danger at the first glimpse--danger to the
uttermost of violent death. Yet Cocky did nothing. No panic stirred his
heart. Motionless, one eye only turned upon the crack, he focused that
one eye upon the head and eyes of the gaunt gut