r of
the house close behind the fugitive and heard the heavy slam of it.

In another breath, pulling himself together, he was up and descending
three and four steps at a stride. Reaching the door, he threw it open
and himself heedlessly out and down a high stone stoop to the
sidewalk--pulled up, bewildered to discover himself the sole living
thing visible in all that night-hushed stretch between Fifth Avenue
and Sixth: of the assassin there was neither sign nor sound....

He felt perilously on the verge of tears--would gladly have bawled and
howled with temper--and gained little relief from another short-lived
break of heartfelt profanity--something halting and inexpert, truth to
tell.

Above him, on the stoop, the lady of the house appeared; paused to
peer searchingly east and west; looked down at the trembling figure of
the small man in his overgrown police tunic, shaking an impotent fist
in the face of the City of New York; and laughed quietly to herself.

"Come back," she called in a guarded tone. "He's made a clean getaway.
Got to hand him _that_. No use trying to follow--you'd never catch up
in a thousand years. Come back--d'you hear?--and give me my gun!"

A trifle dashed, P. Sybarite raked the street with final reluctant
glances; then in a spirit of witless and unquestioning docility
returned.

The woman retired to the vestibule, where she closed and locked the
door as he passed through, further ensuring security by means of a
chain-bolt; then entering the hallway, closed, locked, and similarly
bolted the inner doors.

"Now, then!" she addressed the little man with a brilliant smile--"now
we can pow-wow. Come into the den"--and led the way toward the rear of
the house.

Trotting submissively in her wake, his wrinkled nose and batting
eyelids were eloquent of the dumb amaze with which he was reviewing
this incredible affair.

Turning into a dark doorway, the woman switched light into an electric
dome, illuminating an interior apartment transformed, by a wildly
original taste in eccentric decoration, into a lounging room of such
distressful uniquity that it would have bred unrest in the soul of a
lotus-eater.

Black, red, and gold--lustreless black of coke, lurid crimson of fresh
blood, bright glaring yellow of gold new-minted--were the predominant
notes in a colour scheme at once sombre and violent. The walls were
hung with scarlet tapestries whereon gold dragons crawled and fought
or strove to swal