eet Cutty, this
rather forlorn Johnny Two-Hawks, with his unshaven face, his black eye,
and his nonchalance. She would fetch him at once. It would save a good
deal of time.

There were but ten apartments in the building, two on a floor. The
living room formed an L. Kitty's buttressed Gregor's. The elevator shaft
was inside, facing the court; and the stair head was on the Gregor side
of the elevator. The two entrances faced each other across the landing.

As Kitty opened her door to step outside she was nonplussed to see two
men issue cautiously from the Gregor door. The moment they espied her,
however, there was a mad rush for the stair head. She could hear the
thud of their feet all the way down to the ground floor; and every
footfall seemed to touch her heart. One of them carried a bundle.

She breathed quickly, and she knew that she was afraid. Neither man was
Johnny Two-Hawks. Something dreadful had happened; she was sure of it.
Reenforcing her sinking courage with nerve energy she ran across to the
Gregor door and knocked. No answer. She knocked again; then she tried
the door. Locked. The flutter in her breast died away; she became quite
calm. She was going to enter this apartment by the way of the fire
escape. The window he had come out of was still up. She had made note of
this from the kitchen. In returning he had stepped on to the springe of
a snare.

She hurried back to her kitchen for the automatic. She hadn't the least
idea how to manipulate it; but she was no longer afraid of it. Bravely
she stepped out on to the fire escape. To reach her objective she had
to walk under the ladder. Danger often puts odd irrelevancies into the
human brain. As she moved forward she wondered if there was anything in
the superstition regarding ladders.

When she reached the window she leaned against the brick wall and
listened. Silence; an ominous silence. The window was open, the curtain
up. Within, what? For as long as five minutes she waited, then she
climbed in.

Now as this bedroom was a counterpart of her own she knew where the
light button would be. She might stumble over a chair or two, but in the
end she would find the light. The fingers of one hand spread out before
her and the other clutching the impossible automatic, she succeeded in
navigating the uncharted reefs of an unfamiliar room. She blinked for a
moment after throwing on the light, and stood with her back to the wall,
the automatic wabbling at nothing