pushed
the door open, and pocketed the key. He was about to enter when the bag
again squirmed gently in his grip.

From the days of Pandora, through the epoch of Bluebeard's wife, down
to the present time, one of the chief failings of humanity has been the
disposition to open things that were better closed. It would have been
simple for Archie to have taken another step and put a door between
himself and the world, but there came to him the irresistible desire to
peep into the bag now--not three seconds later, but now. All the way
up in the lift he had been battling with the temptation, and now he
succumbed.

The bag was one of those simple bags with a thingummy which you press.
Archie pressed it. And, as it opened, out popped the head of Peter. His
eyes met Archie's. Over his head there seemed to be an invisible mark
of interrogation. His gaze was curious, but kindly. He appeared to be
saying to himself, "Have I found a friend?"

Serpents, or Snakes, says the Encyclopaedia, are reptiles of the saurian
class Ophidia, characterised by an elongated, cylindrical, limbless,
scaly form, and distinguished from lizards by the fact that the halves
(RAMI) of the lower jaw are not solidly united at the chin, but movably
connected by an elastic ligament. The vertebra are very numerous,
gastrocentrous, and procoelous. And, of course, when they put it like
that, you can see at once that a man might spend hours with combined
entertainment and profit just looking at a snake.

Archie would no doubt have done this; but long before he had time really
to inspect the halves (RAMI) of his new friend's lower jaw and to admire
its elastic fittings, and long before the gastrocentrous and procoelous
character of the other's vertebrae had made any real impression on
him, a piercing scream almost at his elbow--startled him out of his
scientific reverie. A door opposite had opened, and the woman of the
elevator was standing staring at him with an expression of horror and
fury that went through, him like a knife. It was the expression
which, more than anything else, had made Mme. Brudowska what she was
professionally. Combined with a deep voice and a sinuous walk, it
enabled her to draw down a matter of a thousand dollars per week.

Indeed, though the fact gave him little pleasure, Archie, as a matter of
fact, was at this moment getting about--including war-tax--two dollars
and seventy-five cents worth of the great emotional star for nothing.