from here in ten seconts I'll ring for the night
watchman on the block, and I'll blow a whistle for the police. I've got
me hand on the alarm hook right now. Will you go or will I rouse the
whole block?"

"Pray be calm, madam, I'll go. In fact, I'm going now."

He fell back out of the areaway. Fresh uproar at this critical juncture
would be doubly direful. It would almost certainly bring the vengeful
Switzer, with his bruised shanks. It would inevitably bring some one.

X

Mr. Leary retreated to the sidewalk, figuratively casting from him the
shards and potsherds of his reawakened anticipations, now all so rudely
shattered again. He was doomed. It would inevitably be his fate to cower
in these cold and drafty purlieus until----

No, it wouldn't either!

Like a golden rift in a sable sky a brand-new ray of cheer opened before
him. Who were those married friends of Slack's, who lived on the third
floor--friends with whom once upon a time he and Slack had shared a
chafing-dish supper? What was the name? Brady? No, Braydon. That was
it--Mr. and Mrs. Edward Braydon. He would slip back again, on noiseless
feet, to the doorway where the bells were. He would bide there until the
startled caretaker had gone back to her sleep, or at least to her bed.
Then he would play a solo on the Braydons' bell until he roused them.
They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they
would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and
excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and
once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were
a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be only too
glad to give him shelter from the elements until Bob Slack returned
from his session at bridge. He was saved!

Within the coping of the stoop he crouched and waited--waited for five
long palpitating minutes which seemed to him as hours. Then he applied
an eager and quivering finger to the Braydons' button. Sweet boon of
vouchsafed mercy! Almost instantly the latch clicked. And now in another
instant Mr. Leary was within solid walls, with the world and the weather
shut out behind him.

He stood a moment, palpitant with mute thanksgiving, in the hallway,
which was made obscure rather than bright by a tiny pinprick of
gaslight; and as thus he stood, fortifying himself with resolution for
the embarrassing necessity of presenting himself, in all his show of
quaint fr