turned back and entered the
bar. It was deserted at that hour of the morning, save for a
disconsolate-looking individual who leaned upon one ragged elbow,
gazing mournfully into his empty whisky glass at the end of the
narrow, varnished counter. The bartender emerged from a door leading
into the back room, with a tall, empty glass in his hand, and Morrow
asked for a beer. As he stood sipping it, he watched the bartender
replenish the empty unwashed glass he had carried with a generous
drink of doubtful looking absinthe and a squirt from a syphon.

"Bum drink on a cold morning," he observed tentatively. "Have a whisky
straight, on me?"

"I will that!" the bartender returned heartily. "This green-eyed fairy
stuff ain't for me; it's for a dame in the back room--one of the
regulars. She's been hittin' it up all the morning, but it don't seem
to affect her--funny, too, for she ain't a boozer, as a general thing.
Her guy's gone back on her, an' she's sore. I'll be with you in a
minute."

He vanished into the back room with the glass, and before he returned,
the disconsolate individual had slunk out, leaving Morrow in sole
possession. If this place was indeed the rendezvous of the gang of
minor criminals with which Charley Pennold had allied himself, he had
obviously come at the wrong time to obtain any information concerning
him, unless the voluble bartender could be made to talk, and that
would be a difficult matter.

"Look here!" Morrow decided on a bold move, as the bartender
reappeared and placed a bottle of whisky between them. He leaned
forward, after a quick, furtive glance about him, and spoke rapidly,
with a disarming air of confidential frankness. "I'm in an awful hole.
I'm new at this game, and I've got to find a fellow I never saw, and
find him quick. He hangs out here, and the big guy sent me for him."

"What big guy?" The cordiality faded from the bartender's ruddy
countenance and he stepped back significantly.

"You know--Pad!" Morrow shot back on a desperate bluff. "The fellow's
name's Charley Pennold, and Pad wants him right away. He didn't tell
me to ask you about him, but he made it pretty plain to me that he'd
got to get him."

"Say!" The bartender approached cautiously. He rested one hand upon
the counter, keeping the other well below it, but Morrow did not
flinch. "What's your lay?"

"Anything there's coin in," returned the operative, with a knowing
leer. "Anything from planting divorce evide