milar to the one by which
it was approached. Beyond this, all description of this celebrated haunt
of crime would be impossible, for the rest was a labyrinth of apparently
useless passages and stairways, ascending and descending, the following
of which was only to invite complete and utter confusion of mind. The
legend ran that the cellars, many floors deep, undermined half a dozen
adjacent streets, and, in the block in which the place stood, no one had
ever been found who could say where the house began and where it ended.

As a refuge for its benighted guests there was always a bed, of sorts, a
meal and drink--at a price. If the visitor were legitimate in his claims
on its hospitality he would fare no worse than a lightened purse at the
time of his departure. If he were other than he pretended then it would
have been better for him to have shunned the darkened passage as he
would a plague spot.

The owner of the place was never seen by the guests. It was
administered, as far as could be judged, by a number of men who only
intruded upon their clients when definite necessity arose. Then the
intrusion was something cyclonic. On these occasions the police were
never called in, and the nature of the disturbance, and the result of
it, was never permitted to reach the outside. Mallard's was capable of
hiding up anything. Its own crimes as well as the crimes of others.

On one of the many floors was a large sort of office and lounging-room.
It had been extended, as necessity demanded, by the simple process of
taking down partition walls. It was low-ceiled and dingy. Its walls were
mostly panelled with dull, shabby graining over many coats of paint. The
floor was bare and unscrubbed, and littered with frowsy-looking wooden
cuspidors filled with cinders. There were many small tables scattered
about, and the rest of the space seemed to be filled up with Windsor
chairs, which jostled one another to an extent that made passage a
matter of patient effort. At one end of the room was a long counter with
an iron grid protecting those behind it. And, in this region there were
several telephone boxes with unusually heavy and sound-proof doors.

For the rest it was peopled by the hard-faced, powerful-looking clerks
behind the iron grid of the counter, and a gathering of men sitting
about at the small tables, or lounging with their feet on the anthracite
stove which stood out in the centre of the great apartment.

It was a mixed enoug