noticed there was a second door at the
foot of the stairs. He guessed it let upon the street.

They gained the upstairs landing and paused. Martin saw before him a
long hall with at least a dozen doors opening upon it. A gas light
burned at the farther end. As he had suspected from without, this
place was, or had been, a cheap lodging-house. Nothing save that light
seemed to speak of occupancy now.

Martin took his first good look at his guide. He was, as he had noted
on the stairs, a Japanese; a chunky little man with an apologetic
manner, and a muscular and bow-legged figure. If he had been a white
man, Martin would have listed him a sailor.

The Japanese smiled. His teeth flashed startlingly white in his dark
face.

"He, hon'ble, catch it Captain down there," he stated.

He waved a hand toward the gas light at the other end of the hall.
Then he opened the door of the room nearest to hand.

"He, hon'ble, stop by here," he invited. "I go make prepare."

Martin shrugged his shoulders. There seemed to be many preliminaries
to an audience with this Captain Carew. Through the door the Jap held
open he saw the outlines of a bed, and a rag of carpet. When he
stepped through the door, the musty, sour air of the room smote his
nostrils like a blow.

The Japanese closed the door, and the retreating echo of his footsteps
sounded from the hall. Martin had not expected to be thus shut in
darkness, but after all it was a small matter. He felt his way to the
bed and sat down on its edge.

After a moment he struck a match. The flare revealed, as he expected,
the meanly appointed bedroom of a tenth rate hostelry. The single
window was shuttered.

He composed himself to patience. This business was getting on his
nerves. This visit to the Black Cruiser was not proving the evening's
anti-climax, as he had feared, but he was not enjoying himself. The
loose face of the Cruiser's commander, the mysterious Japanese, the
disturbing secrecy, the foul air--he would be glad when his errand was
completed, and he was once again outdoors in the clean, fresh air.

There was an alien taint in that poisonous room. With the Japanese in
mind he placed it--it was that indefinable odor the man of the Orient
leaves about his abiding place, the smell one gets during a walk
through Chinatown. Was this Spulvedo conducting this rookery as a
Japanese lodging-house?

A strange place for a sea-captain to lodge. This Carew--th