aces width, in one corner of
which was cut a smaller door so low a man must stoop to pass. Upon
this smaller door she rapped and stood in the attitude of waiting.

I had a moment now to look about me. It was in a quarter of the town
that was forbidding. Here were two huge, dismal, gray-stone mansions,
separated by a court-yard of probably forty paces across; a high wall
fronted the street, flanked by a tower on either side the gate. On
top, this wall was defended by bits of broken glass and spikes of
steel, stuck into the masonry while it was yet soft. More than this
the flickering brazier would not permit me to see. All of this I took
in at a glance; across the street the murkiness of the night shut out
my view. She rapped again, impatiently, but in the same manner as
before. A trifling space thereafter the smaller door was opened,
whoever was inside having first peeped out through a round hole, which
closed itself with a shutter no bigger than his eye.

The lady looked first to me, then stepped inside and stood back as if
she bade me enter.

This was an adventure I had not bargained for. Thinking only to see
that the lady reached her destination in safety, here was a
complication of which I had never dreamed. What her singular errand
was, or wherein she desired my assistance, I could not even hazard a
guess. Yet there she stood and beckoned me to enter, and I moved
forward a pace or two so I could see within the door.

The _concierge_ held the door ajar, and a more repulsive, deformed
wretch I never laid eyes upon. His left arm hung withered by his side;
at his girdle he swung a bunch of keys, with any one of which a strong
man might have brained an ox. Every evil passion which curses the race
of men had left its imprint upon his lowering countenance. Yet for a
moment, when his gaze rested upon the girl, it was as though some spark
of her loveliness drove the villainy from his face. He was hardly so
tall as she who stood beside him watching me, the semblance of a
mocking sneer about her lips. Looking past them both I could see what
manner of place it was. A smoky oil-lamp sputtered in the rear,
sufficiently distinct to disclose the paved court-yard, covered with
the green slime which marks the place where no sun ever shines.
Further than this I could see nothing except the tall gray buildings
which shut in every side and this wall in front. That door once locked
upon the intruder there would be n