ornik's answers. "Of course, he might have gone in. There is an
Amerikanka here, from the Consulate, and he might have gone to her."
Then the policeman, cutting the knot: "We'll soon see about that!" He
waited no longer, but entered and darted up the stair; he must at all
costs not be caught before he got to Miss Pilgrim.

It was the thought of her and the expectation of her welcome to the
barren room that made him smile as he climbed. Muddy, penniless and
hunted, he knew himself for one that brought gifts; he was going to
make her rich with the sense of power and benevolence. He was
half-way up the second flight, at the head of which she lived, when
he heard the policeman and his following of citizens enter below him
and the stamp of their firm ascending feet on the lower steps. He
took the remaining stairs three at a time. Upon the landing, the door
of the flat stood ajar.

Gently, with precautions not to be heard below, he pushed it open,
uncovering the remembered view of the furniture-cluttered passage,
with the doors of rooms opening from it and the kitchen door at the
end. The kitchen door was closed now; there was no sound anywhere
within the place. Nearest to him, on the left of the passage, the
door of the room in which he had drunk tea was open and dark.

He tapped nervously with his nails upon the door, hearing from below
the approaching footsteps of the hunters.

"Miss Pilgrim," he called in a loud whisper along the passage. "Miss
Pilgrim!"

The bell-push was a button somewhere in the woodwork and he could not
find it. He tapped and whispered again. The others were at the foot
of the second flight now; in a couple of seconds the turn of the
staircase would let them see him, and he would be captured and
dragged away from her very threshold. He had a last agony of
hesitation, an impulse swiftly tasted and rejected, to try a rush
down the stairs and a fight to get through and away; and then he
stepped into the flat and eased the door to behind him. Its patent
lock latched itself with a small click unheard by the party whose
feet clattered on the stone steps.

There was a clock somewhere in the dwelling that ticked pompously and
monotonously, and no other sound. Standing inside the door, in that
hush of the house, he was oppressed by a sense of shameful trespass;
he glanced with trepidation towards the kitchen, dreading to see
someone come forth and shriek at the sight of him. Supposing Miss
Pilgrim were