eye, his mouth
ajar, his trousers high enough to disclose bony purple ankles. His
welcome to the incoming guest was comprised in an indifferent nod as
their eyes met, and a subsequent glance at the register which seemed
unaccountably to moderate his apathy.

"Mr. Morton--uh?" he inquired.

Whitaker nodded without words.

The youth shrugged and scrawled an hieroglyph after the name. "Here,
Sammy," he said to the boy--"Forty-three." To Whitaker he addressed the
further remark: "Trunks?"

"No."

The youth seemed about to expostulate, but checked when Whitaker placed
one of his hundred-dollar notes on the counter.

"I think that'll cover my liability," he said with a significance
misinterpreted by the other.

"I ain't got enough change--"

"That's all right; I'm in no hurry."

The eyes of the lout followed him as he ascended the stairs in the path
of Sammy, who had already disappeared. Annoyed, Whitaker quickened his
pace to escape the stare. On the second floor he discovered the bell-boy
waiting some distance down a long, darksome corridor, indifferently
lighted by a single window at its far end. As Whitaker came into view,
the boy thrust open the door, disappeared for an instant, and came out
minus the bag. Whitaker gave him a coin in passing--an attention which
he acknowledged by pulling the door to with a bang the moment the guest
had entered the room. At the same time Whitaker became aware of a
contretemps.

The room was of fair size, lighted by two windows overlooking the tin
roof of the front veranda. It was furnished with a large double bed in
the corner nearest the door a wash-stand, two or three chairs, a
bandy-legged table with a marble top; and it was tenanted by a woman in
street dress.

She stood by the wash-stand, with her back to the light, her attitude
one of tense expectancy: hardly more than a silhouette of a figure
moderately tall and very slight, almost angular in its slenderness. She
had been holding a tumbler in one hand, but as Whitaker appeared this
slipped from her fingers; there followed a thud and a sound of spilt
liquid at her feet. Simultaneously she cried out inarticulately in a
voice at once harsh and tremulous; the cry might have been "_You!_" or
"_Hugh!_" Whitaker took it for the latter, and momentarily imagined that
he had stumbled into the presence of an acquaintance. He was pulling off
his hat and peering at her shadowed face in an effort to distinguish
features possibly