ons of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful
breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I
saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here
the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk
stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French
heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if
gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim
inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate
dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.

"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to
send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted
on stayin'."

As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him,
and that he was referring to the man we sought.

"Show me where he is," I commanded.

"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"

In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first
chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands
clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no
evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.
But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on
the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert
hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's
dead!"

As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he
hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble
foh me, boss--!"

"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"

Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood
there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch
up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things
under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was
left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and
inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance
and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man
and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad
taste to die on the morning paper's time.

And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing
chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his
questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her d