dictated
many of the seemingly inconsequent acts of the little heroine of Thrawl
Street. This he imagined to be quite possible. "They are great as a
nation," he thought, "but most of them are mad. I will tell Lois
to-morrow that I have seen her sister in St. James' Square. I shouldn't
wonder if she knew all about this house and the party--and Boriskoff
will, if she doesn't."

He contented himself with this; and the girl having disappeared from the
alcove and a footman announced, in a terrible voice, that Lady Smigg's
carriage barred the way, he turned from the house and continued upon his
way to the "caves." It was then nearly one o'clock, and save for an
occasional hansom making a dash to a club door, St. James' Street was
deserted. Alban took one swift look up and down, crossed the street at a
run and disappeared down the court which led to those amazing "tombs"
of which few in London save the night-birds and the builders so much as
suspect the existence.

He did not go alone; he was not, as he thought, unwatched. A detective,
commissioned by an unknown patron to follow him, crossed the road
directly he had disappeared, and saying, "So that's the game," began to
wonder if he also might dare the venture.

He, at least, knew well what he was doing and the class of person he
would be likely to meet down there in the depths of which even the
police were afraid.

CHAPTER IV

THE CAVES

The "labyrinth" beneath the West End of London was rediscovered in our
own time when the foundations for the Carlton Hotel and his Majesty's
Theatre were laid. It is a network of old cellars, subterranean passages
and, it may even be, of disused conduits, extended from the corner of
Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, away to the confines of St. James' Park--and,
as more daring explorers aver, to the river Thames itself. Here is a
very town of tunnels and arches, of odd angled rooms, of veritable caves
and depths as dark as Styx. If, in a common way, it be shut by the
circumstance of the buildings above to the riff-raff and night-hawks who
would frequent it, there are seasons, nevertheless, when the laying of
new foundations, the building of hotels and the demolition of ancient
streets in the name of "improvement" fling its gates open to the more
cunning of the "destitutes," and they flock there as rooks to a field
newly sown.

Of these welcome opportunities, the building of the Carlton Hotel is the
best remembered within recent tim