turned westward.

New York is a big city, and therefore entitled to present an occasional
anomaly to the observant eye. And this particular section of
Twenty-eighth Street is one of these departures from the normal, a
block or two of respectable, even handsome houses set as an oasis in a
dull and sordid neighborhood. How and why this should be does not
matter; it is to be presumed that the people who live there are
satisfied, and it is nobody else's business.

We walked on slowly, then, half-way down the block, Indiman stopped me.
"What did I tell you?" he whispered.

The house was of the English basement type, and occupied two of the
ordinary city lots; nothing particularly remarkable about that, and I
said as much.

"But look again," insisted Indiman. I did so and saw a man standing at
the door, evidently desirous of entering. Twice, while we stood
watching him, he rang without result, and the delay annoyed him. He
shook the door-knob impatiently, and then fell to researching his
pockets, an elaborate operation that consumed several minutes.

"Lost his latch-key," commented Indiman. He walked up the steps of the
entrance porch. "You might try mine," he said, politely, and held out
the key picked up the night before at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-seventh
Street.

"Huh!" grunted the man, suspiciously, but he took the little piece of
metal and inserted it into the slot of the lock. The door swung open.
Amazing, but what followed was even more incredible. The man stepped
into the hall, but continued to hold the door wide open.

"You're coming in, I suppose," he said, surlily.

"Certainly," answered Indiman. "This way, Thorp," he called at me, and
most unwillingly I obeyed. We passed into the house and the door closed
behind us. Our introducer turned up the gas in the old-fashioned hall
chandelier, and favored us with a perfunctory stare. "New members, eh!"
he grunted, and turned away as though it were a matter of entire
indifference to him. But Indiman spoke up quickly.

"Pardon me," he began, with the sweetest suavity. "I was afraid for the
moment that we had got into the wrong place. This is the--" a
delicately suggestive pause.

"The Utinam Club," supplied the other.

"Exactly," said Indiman, in a most relieved tone. "It IS the Utinam,
Thorp," he continued, turning to me. Now I had not the smallest notion
of what the Utinam Club might be, consequently I preserved a discreet
silence. Indiman addressed himself