the trap, upon which Soft Shoes mounted,
crouched, hesitated, crouched again, and then leaped amazingly upward.
He caught at the edge of the aperture and swung back and forth, for a
moment, shifting his hold; finally doubled up and disappeared into the
darkness above. There was a scurry, a migration of rats, as the
trap-door was replaced;... silence.

Wessel returned to his reading-table, opened to the Legend of
Britomartis or of Chastity--and waited. Almost a minute later there
was a scramble on the stairs and an intolerable hammering at the door.
Wessel sighed and, picking up his candle, rose.

"Who's there?"

"Open the door!"

"Who's there?"

An aching blow frightened the frail wood, splintered it around the
edge. Wessel opened it a scarce three inches, and held the candle
high. His was to play the timorous, the super-respectable citizen,
disgracefully disturbed.

"One small hour of the night for rest. Is that too much to ask from
every brawler and--"

"Quiet, gossip! Have you seen a perspiring fellow?"

The shadows of two gallants fell in immense wavering outlines over the
narrow stairs; by the light Wessel scrutinized them closely.
Gentlemen, they were, hastily but richly dressed--one of them wounded
severely in the hand, both radiating a sort of furious horror. Waving
aside Wessel's ready miscomprehension, they pushed by him into the
room and with their swords went through the business of poking
carefully into all suspected dark spots in the room, further extending
their search to Wessel's bedchamber.

"Is he hid here?" demanded the wounded man fiercely.

"Is who here?"

"Any man but you."

"Only two others that I know of."

For a second Wessel feared that he had been too damned funny, for the
gallants made as though to prick him through.

"I heard a man on the stairs," he said hastily, "full five minutes
ago, it was. He most certainly failed to come up."

He went on to explain his absorption in "The Faerie Queene" but, for
the moment at least, his visitors, like the great saints, were
anaesthetic to culture.

"What's been done?" inquired Wessel.

"Violence!" said the man with the wounded hand. Wessel noticed that
his eyes were quite wild. "My own sister. Oh, Christ in heaven, give
us this man!"

Wessel winced.

"Who is the man?"

"God's word! We know not even that. What's that trap up there?" he
added suddenly.

"It's nailed down. It's not been used for years." He thought of the
p