ht to Jimmie Dale.

"It's you, is it," she whispered fiercely through her sobs "that would
bring more shame and ruin here--you that's selling my man's life away
with your filthy lies for what they're paying you--it's you, is it,
that--" Her voice broke.

There was a frightened, uneasy look in Larry the Bat's eyes, his lips
were twitching weakly, he drew far back against the wall--and then,
glancing miserably at the officers, as though entreating their
permission, began to edge toward the door.

For a moment she watched him, her face white with outrage, her hand
clenched at her side--and then she found her voice again.

"Get out of here!" she said, in a choked, strained way pointing to the
door. "Get out of here--you dirty skate!"

"Sure!" mumbled Larry the Bat, his eyes on the floor. "Sure!" he
mumbled--and the door closed behind him.

PART TWO: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE

CHAPTER I

BELOW THE DEAD LINE

Whisperings! Always whisperings, low, sibilant, floating errantly
from all sides, until they seemed a component part of the drug-laden
atmosphere itself. And occasionally another sound: the soft SLAP-SLAP
of loose-slippered feet, the faint rustle of equally loose-fitting
garments. And everywhere the sweet, sickish smell of opium. It was Chang
Foo's, simply a cellar or two deeper in Chang Foo's than that in which
Dago Jim had quarrelled once--and died!

Larry the Bat, vicious-faced, unkempt, disreputable, lay sprawled out on
one of the dive's bunks, an opium pipe beside him. But Larry the Bat was
not smoking; instead, his ear was pressed closely against the boarding
that formed the rather flimsy partition at the side of the bunk. One
heard many things in Chang Foo's if one cared to listen--if one could
first win one's way through the carefully guarded gateway, that to the
uninitiated offered nothing more interesting than the entrance to a
Chinese tea-shop, and an uninviting one at that!

HAD HE BEEN FOLLOWED IN HERE? He had been shadowed for the last hour; of
that, at least, he was certain. Why? By whom? For an hour he had dodged
in and out through the dens of the underworld, as only one who was at
home there and known to all could do--and at last he had taken refuge in
Chang Foo's like a fox burrowing deep into its hole.

Few could find their way into the most infamous opium den in all New
York, where not only the poppy ruled as master, but where crime was
hatched, ay, and carried to its ghastly consum