a place was it, this headquarters of the
gang? For it must be the headquarters, since it was from there the code
messages would naturally emanate, and this deformed creature, from what
he had said, was the "secretary" of the nefarious clique that was ruled
by his brother. And was luck really with her at last? Suppose she had
been but a few minutes later in reaching Gypsy Nan's house, and had
found, instead of this man here, only the note instructing her to go and
meet Danglar! What would she have done? What explanation could she have
made for her nonappearance? Her hands would have been tied. She would
have been helpless. She could not have answered the summons, for she
could have had no idea where this gang-lair was; and the note certainly
would not contain such details as street and number, which she was
obviously supposed to know. She smiled a little grimly to herself.
Yes, it seemed as though fortune were beginning to smile upon her
again--fortune, at least, had supplied her with a guide.

The twisted figure walked on the inside of the sidewalk, and curiously
seemed to seek as much as possible the protecting shadows of the
buildings, and invariably shrank back out of the way of the passers-by
they met. She watched him narrowly as they went along. What was
he afraid of? Recognition? It puzzled her for a time, and then
she understood: It was not fear of recognition; the sullen, almost
belligerent stare with which he met the eyes of those with whom he
came into close contact belied that. The man was morbidly, abnormally
sensitive of his deformity.

They turned at last into one of the East Side cross streets, and her
guide halted finally on a corner in front of a little shop that was
closed and dark. She stared curiously as the man unlocked the door.
Perhaps, after all, she had been woefully mistaken. It did not look at
all the kind of place where crimes that ran the gamut of the decalogue
were hatched, at all the sort of place that was the council chamber
of perhaps the most cunning, certainly the most cold-blooded and
unscrupulous, band of crooks that New York had ever harbored. And
yet--why not? Wasn't there the essence of cunning in that very fact? Who
would suspect anything of the sort from a ramshackle, two-story little
house like this, whose front was a woe-begone little store, the proceeds
of which might just barely keep the body and soul of its proprietor
together?

The man fumbled with the lock. There was n