rading in dripping black oilskins. To
Whitaker's inquiry he recommended the C'mercial House. Whitaker agreed
and imprisoned himself in the body of the vehicle, sitting on stained
and faded, threadbare cushions, in company with two distinct odours, of
dank and musty upholstery and of stale tuberoses. As they rocked and
crawled away, the blind windows wept unceasingly, and unceasingly the
rain drummed the long roll on the roof.

In time they stopped before a rambling structure whose weather-boarded
facade, white with flaking paint, bore the legend: COMMERCIAL HOUSE.
Whitaker paid his fare and, unassisted, carried his hand-bag up the
steps and across the rain-swept veranda into a dim, cavernous hall whose
walls were lined with cane-seated arm-chairs punctuated at every second
chair by a commodious brown-fibre cuspidor. A cubicle fenced off in one
corner formed the office proper--for the time being untenanted. There
was, indeed, no one in sight but a dejected hall-boy, innocent of any
sort of livery. On demand he accommodatingly disentangled himself from a
chair, a cigarette and a paper-backed novel, and wandered off down a
corridor, ostensibly to unearth the boss.

Whitaker waited by the desk, a gaunt, weary man, hag-ridden by fear.
There was in his mind a desolate picture of the room up-stairs when
he--his soul: the imperishable essence of himself--should have finished
with it....

At his elbow lay the hotel register, open at a page neatly headed with a
date in red ink. An absence of entries beneath the date-line seemed to
indicate that he was the first guest of the day. Near the book was a
small wooden corral neatly partitioned into stalls wherein were herded
an ink-well, toothpicks, matches, some stationery, and--severely by
itself--a grim-looking raw potato of uncertain age, splotched with ink
and wearing like horns two impaled penholders.

Laboriously prying loose one of the latter, Whitaker registered; but
two-thirds of his name was all he entered; when it came to "Whitaker,"
his pen paused and passed on to write "Philadelphia" in the residence
column.

The thought came to him that he must be careful to obliterate all
laundry marks on his clothing.

In his own good time the clerk appeared: a surly, heavy-eyed, loutish
creature in clothing that suggested he had been grievously misled by
pictures in the advertising pages of magazines. Whitaker noted, with
insensate irritation, that he wore his hair long over one