f opaque glass, bearing no sign to state the business
or profession of the occupants within; but overhead, upon the lintel,
four letters had been smearingly inscribed, partly with purple ink and
partly with a soft lead pencil, "F. O. T. A." and upon the plaster wall,
above the lintel, there was a drawing dear to male adolescence: a skull
and crossbones.

Three raps, similar to Georgie's, sounded from within the room. Georgie
then rapped four times the rapper within the room rapped twice, and
Georgie rapped seven times. This ended precautionary measures; and a
well-dressed boy of sixteen opened the door; whereupon Georgie entered
quickly, and the door was closed behind him. Seven boys of congenial
age were seated in a semicircular row of damaged office chairs, facing a
platform whereon stood a solemn, red-haired young personage with a table
before him. At one end of the room there was a battered sideboard, and
upon it were some empty beer bottles, a tobacco can about two-thirds
full, with a web of mold over the surface of the tobacco, a dusty
cabinet photograph (not inscribed) of Miss Lillian Russell, several
withered old pickles, a caseknife, and a half-petrified section of
icing-cake on a sooty plate. At the other end of the room were two
rickety card-tables and a stand of bookshelves where were displayed
under dust four or five small volumes of M. Guy de Maupassant's stories,
"Robinson Crusoe," "Sappho," "Mr. Barnes of New York," a work by
Giovanni Boccaccio, a Bible, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainment,"
"Studies of the Human Form Divine," "The Little Minister," and a clutter
of monthly magazines and illustrated weeklies of about that crispness
one finds in such articles upon a doctor's ante-room table. Upon the
wall, above the sideboard, was an old framed lithograph of Miss Della
Fox in "Wang"; over the bookshelves there was another lithograph
purporting to represent Mr. John L. Sullivan in a boxing costume, and
beside it a halftone reproduction of "A Reading From Horner." The final
decoration consisted of damaged papiermache--a round shield with two
battle-axes and two cross-hilted swords, upon the wall over the little
platform where stood the red-haired presiding officer. He addressed
Georgie in a serious voice:

"Welcome, Friend of the Ace."

"Welcome, Friend of the Ace," Georgie responded, and all of the other
boys repeated the words, "Welcome, Friend of the Ace."

"Take your seat in the secret semicircle," s