iven her over, for she disappeared from the
Points, and no clue could be got of her," returns the man, pausing for a
moment, then resuming his story. "A week ago yesterday she turned up
again, and I got wind that she was in a place we call 'Black-beetle
Hole'--"

"Black-beetle Hole!" ejaculates the lady, whom the reader will have
discovered is no less a person than Madame Montford. Mr. Detective
Fitzgerald is the visitor.

"Yes, there's where she's got, and it isn't much of a place, to say the
best. But when a poor creature has no other place to get a stretch down,
she stretches down there--"

"Proceed to how you found her, and what you have got from her concerning
the child," the lady interrupts, with a deep sigh.

"Well," proceeds the detective, "I meets--havin' an eye out all the
while--Sergeant Dobbs one morning--Dobbs knows every roost in the Points
better than me!--and says he, 'Fitzgerald, that are woman, that crazy
woman, you've been in tow of so long, has turned up. There was a row in
Black-beetle Hole last night. I got a force and descended into the
place, found it crammed with them half-dead kind of women and men, and
three thieves, what wanted to have a fuss with the hag that keeps it.
One on 'em was thrashing the poor crazy woman. They had torn all the
rags off her back. Hows-ever, if you wants to fish her out, you'd better
be spry about it--'"

The lady interrupts by saying she will disguise, and with his
assistance, go bring her from the place--save her! Mr. Fitzgerald begs
she will take the matter practically. She could not breathe the air of
the place, he says.

"'Thank you Dobbs,' says I," he resumes, "and when it got a bit dark I
went incog. to Black-beetle's Hole--"

"And where is this curious place?" she questions, with an air of
anxiety.

"As to that, Madame--well, you wouldn't know it was lived in, because
its underground, and one not up to the entrance never would think it led
to a place where human beings crawled in at night. I don't wonder so
many of 'em does things what get 'em into the Station, and after that
treated to a short luxury on the Island. As I was goin' on to say, I got
myself fortified, started out into the Points, and walked--we take these
things practically--down and up the east sidewalk, then stopped in front
of the old rotten house that Black-beetle Hole is under. Then I looks
down the wet little stone steps, that ain't wide enough for a big man
to get down, and wha