to get to bed behind a locked door?"

"You've hit it," he said. "That's what I got to do--and lock the
door. That's common sense, that is." He stared at her for an instant,
then rose with care and deliberation to his feet. He had altogether
forgotten his companions; he did not even see them.

"That is, if it'll lock," he added, and held out his hand to Miss
Gregory.

"Good-bye," she said, taking it heartily. "I'm glad to hear of your
good fortune."

He gulped and left her, walking forth through the little tables with
the uncanny straightness of the man "in liquor." Miss Gregory drank
up her coffee and sat where she was.

She could see the men at the next table out of the corner of her eye;
their heads were together, and they were whispering excitedly. The
whole affair was plain enough to a veteran of the world's byways like
Miss Gregory; the plan had been to make the youth drunk, help him
forth, and rob him easily in some convenient corner. He was the kind
of man who lends himself to being robbed; the real wonder was that it
had not been done already. But, mingled with her contempt for his
helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing
instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his
return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his
loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham
Junction--these touched something in her akin to the goodness of
motherhood. It occurred to her that perhaps he had been better off
under the lights of the cafe than alone on his way to his bed; and at
that moment the three men at the next table, their conference over,
rose and went out. She sat still till they were clear; then, on an
impulse of officiousness, got up and went out after them.

Their white clothes shone in the darkness to guide her; they cut
across the square and vanished in one of those dark alleys she had
already remarked. Miss Gregory straightened her felt hat, took a
fresh grip of the stout umbrella, and followed determinedly. The
corner of the alley shut out the lights behind her; tall walls with
scarce windows fast shuttered hemmed her in; the vast night of the
tropics drooped its shadow over her. Through it all she plodded at
the gait familiar to many varieties of men from Poughkeepsie to
Pekin, a squat, resolute figure, reckless alike of risk and ridicule,
an unheroic heroine. There reached her from time to time the noises
that prevail in tho