e sat outside.

Ruyler knew the man by sight. Before the fire he had owned some of the
most disreputable houses in the district the car would pass on its way to
the terminus. The buildings were uninsured, and he had made his living
since as a detective. Even his political breed had gone out of power in
the new San Francisco, but he was well equipped for a certain type of
detective work. He had a remarkable memory for faces and could pierce any
disguise, he was as persistent as a ferret, and his knowledge of the
underworld of San Francisco was illimitable. But his chief assets were
that he looked so little like a detective, and that, so secretive were
his methods, his calling was practically unknown. He had set up a cheap
restaurant with a gambling room behind at which the police winked,
although pretending to raid him now and again. He was a large soft man
with pendulous cheeks streaked with red, a predatory nose, and a black
overhanging mustache. His name was 'Gene Bisbee, and there was a
tradition that in his younger days he had been handsome, and irresistible
to the women who had made his fortune.

Ruyler was absently wondering what his haughty mother-in-law could have
to say to such a man when to his amazement Bisbee planted his elbow in
the pillow of flesh just below Madame Delano's neck, and said easily:

"Oh, come off, Marie. I'd know you if you were twenty years older and
fifty pounds heavier--and that's going some. Bimmer and two or three
others are not so sure--won't bet on it--for twenty years, and, let me
see--you weighed about a hundred and thirty-five--perfect figger--in the
old days. Must weigh two seventy-five now. That makes one forty-five
pounds extra. Well, that and time, and white hair, would change pretty
near any woman, particularly one with small features. You look a real old
lady, and you can't be mor'n forty-five. How did you manage the white
hair? Bleach?"

Ruyler felt his heart turn over. The frozen blood pounded in his brain
and distended his own muscles, his mouth unclosed to let his breath
escape. Then he became aware that the woman had recovered herself and
moved forward, displacing the familiar elbow. She turned imperiously to
the motorman.

"Stop at the corner," she said. "And if this man attempts to follow me
please send back a policeman. He is intoxicated."

The car stopped at the corner of the street opposite the site of the
old Saint Mary's Cathedral, a street where once had be