mplight so close to Leppard
Street.

"Why don't you come back with me? I live quite near here," she murmured.
"Go on. You look as if you wanted someone to make a fuss of you."

Already they were beside the five houses that rose jet-black against the
star-incrusted sky.

"Come on, dear. I live in the corner house."

Michael looked at her in astonishment, and she mistaking his scrutiny
smiled in pitiable allurement. He felt as if a marionette were
blandishing him. The woman evidently thought he was considering the
question of money, and she sidled close up to him.

"Go on, dear, you've got some money with you?"

"It's not that," said Michael. "I don't want to come in with you."

Yet he knew that he must enter Number One with her in order to find in
what secret room she lived. And to-morrow morning he would leave the
house forever, since it would be unimaginable to stay there longer with
the consciousness that perhaps they were creatures like this, who
slammed the doors in passages far upstairs. He would not sleep
comfortably again with the sense that women like this were creeping
about the stairs like spiders. He must probe her existence, and he put
his foot on the steps of the front door.

"Not that door," she said. "Down here."

She pushed back the gate of the area-steps, and led the way down into
the basement. It was incredible that she could live on the same floor as
the Cleghornes. Yet obviously she did.

"Don't make a noise," she whispered. "Because the woman who keeps the
house sleeps down here."

She opened the back door, and he followed her into the frowsty passage.
When the door was dosed behind them, the blackness was absolute.

"Got a vesta with you?" she whispered.

Michael felt her hands pawing him, and he shrank back against the greasy
wall.

"Here you are. Here you are."

The match flamed, but went out before he could light the nodulous candle
she proffered. In the darkness he felt her spongy lips upon his cheek,
but disengaging himself from her assiduousness, he managed to light the
candle. They went along the corridor past the front room where Cleghorne
snored the day away; past the kitchen whose open door exhaled an odorous
breath of habitation; and through a stone pantry. Then she led him down
three steps and up another, unlocked a rickety door, and welcomed him.

"I'm quite on my own, you see," she said, in a voice of tentative
satisfaction.

Michael looked round at the room whic