ere
the "Family Entrance," the private corridor, and one or two halls
admitted him to the restaurant, card rooms and private rooms of the
ground floor of the five-story corner brick building. The youth
recoiled, after a peep through a ground glass door left ajar, at
the glories of the main hall of the famous "Valkyrie" saloon.

"What am I to do?" he mused, as he lit his cigarette in a dark
doorway outside, parrying the coarse advances of two fleeting Cyprians
with a retort which brought the blood to their cheeks, leaping up
under the plastered rouge. "I've been forbidden to call him out of
192; he and my mother are both now fooling the Duchess; I am playing
a double game with Clayton, and, by Hokey, old Wade's watchful men
may drop on to me. I may lose the best job in New York if these
people get all tangled up. What the devil is going on, anyway?"

He crossed the street and gazed up at the glaring red pressed-brick
walls of the Valkyrie corner. All the two score of windows on Dale
Street, and the score on Layte Street were closely guarded with
solid shutters of a green hue.

"God knows what deviltry is going on here," muttered the lad, a coward
at heart. There were fleeting figures of veiled women gliding past
him through the dim entrances, the refluent stream of the Devil's
daughters.

Down the gloomy side street the blue gleam of the pitiless river
showed light against the somber night, the yellow blinking lights
of the tugs flitting about like corpse candles.

In the dark shadows of the involved angular corners, thug and ghoul
lurked until midnight should bring them their prey, the careless
roysterer, or the belated prosperous citizen. Out on Layte Street
the flashy throng was still pouring toward the Fulton Ferry.

"I wonder if I dare," mused the lad, as he walked around the corner
and paused before No. 192 Layte Street. The sober splendor of the
richly decorated old five-story brownstone told of the vanished
glories of the ante-bellum days.

A stately mansion in whose halls there had been royal cheer in the
departed days when Brooklyn had its proud burghers and New York its
simple citizens of worth. But the pressure of commerce, the havoc
of the bridge construction, the onrush of warehouse, shop, and the
pressure of the street railway octopus had left the sedate mansion
a relic of better days in an incongruous medley of little shops,
doubtful lodging-houses, vile man-traps, and clustering saloons.

Her