re was she? How had
she managed to leave the taxicab? When had the man, who now lay sprawled
in the cab, entered it?

He had driven straight from the Union Station to the address given by
the woman--straight down East End Avenue, turning neither to right nor
left. The utter impossibilty of the situation robbed it of some of its
stark horror. And yet--

Spike knew that he must do something. He tried to think connectedly, and
found it a difficult task. Near him loomed the shadow which was No. 981
East End Avenue--the address given by the woman when she entered the cab.
He might go in there and report the circumstances. Some one there would
know who she was, and--but he hesitated.

Perhaps this thing had been prearranged. Perhaps they would get him--for
what he didn't know. When a man--a young man--comes face to face with
murder for the first time, making its acquaintance on a freezing December
midnight and in a lonely spot, he is not to be blamed if his mental
equilibrium is destroyed.

Wild plans chased each other through his brain. He might dump the body by
the roadside and run back to town. That was absurd on the face of it, for
he would be convicting himself when the body was found. It would be
traced to him in some way--he knew that. He was already determined to
keep away from No. 981 East End Avenue. There was something sinister in
the unfriendly shadow of the rambling house. He might call the police.

That was it--he would call the police. But how? Go into a house near by,
wake the residents, telephone headquarters that a murder had been done?
Alarm the neighborhood, and identify himself with the crime? Spike was
afraid, frankly and boyishly afraid--afraid of the present, and more
afraid of the future.

And yet he knew that he must get in touch with the police, else the
police would eventually get in touch with him. He thought then of taking
the body in to headquarters; but he feared that his cab might be stopped
_en route_ to the city and the body discovered. They would never believe,
then, that he had been bound for headquarters.

Almost before he knew that he had arrived at a decision, Spike had groped
his way across the icy street and pressed the bell-button on the front
door of the least unprepossessing house on the block.

For a long time there was no answer. Finally a light shone in the hall,
and the skinny figure of a man, shivering violently despite the
blanket-robe which enfolded him, appeared in