arch
like a tunnel, outside whose gates the swaddled dvornik huddled upon
the sheltered side of the arch. Of all his body, only his eyes moved
as they approached, pivoting under his great hood to scan them and
follow them through the gate. Within, the small court was a pit of
gloom roofed by the windy sky; a glass-paneled door let them in to a
winding stone stair with an iron handrail that was greasy to the
touch. It was upon the second floor that Miss Pilgrim halted and put
a key into a door.

There was a hall within, a narrow passage cumbered with big
furniture, wardrobes and the like, which had obviously overflowed
from the rooms. At the far end of it, a door was ajar, letting out a
slit of bright light and a smell of cabbage. Miss Pilgrim opened a
nearer door, reached for the switch and turned to summon Waters
where he waited in the entry, browsing with those eager eyes of his
upon this new pasture.

"Here's where you'll come when you want me," she said.

He entered the room, walked as far as the middle of it and looked
about him. To his sensitive apprehension, whetted to fineness in the
years of his wandering and gazing, it was as though a chill and dead
air filled the place, a suggestion as of funerals. Opposite the door,
two tall windows, like sepulchral portals, framed oblongs of the
outer darkness; and the white-tiled stove in the corner was like a
mausoleum. The cheap parquet of the floor had a clammy gleam; a tiny
icon, roosting high in a corner, showed a tawdry shine of gilding;
the whole room, square and lofty, with its sparse furniture grouped
stiffly about its emptiness, was gaunt and forbidding. Of a
personality that should be at home within it and leave the impress of
its life upon the place, there was not a sign; it was the corpse of a
room. Waters turned from his scrutiny of it towards Miss Pilgrim,
standing yet by the door and clear to see at last in the light. She
smiled at him with her pale, quiet face, and he marked how, when she
ceased to smile, her mouth drooped and her face returned to shadow.
"That's Selby," he told himself hotly. "Selby done that to her!"

There was another door in the corner, near the white stove. It stood
a few inches open, revealing nothing. But as he glanced towards it,
it seemed to him that he detected in the lifeless air a nuance of
fragrance, something elusive as a shade that emanated from the
farther room, and had in its very slightness and delicacy a
suggestio