I walked on down to Birmingham and took a room in an obscure house in a slum district, run by a blowzy slattern who answered to "Old Mag." The parlor was equipped with a weary wireless set and an assortment of highly-flavored gentlemen in the last stages of disrepair. One of them looked like a racetrack tout fallen on evil days, another I could have sworn was a professional mugger. A fitting den for the Manchester Slasher! I was careful not to touch anything at all until I had gone out and bought a pair of thin silk gloves, which I wore at all times thereafter. The proprietor of the pawnshop gave me a knowing wink as he handed them to me. I'm sure he thought I was a cat-burglar or a safe-cracker. No one in my new home deigned to notice them. I must mention that, quite by accident and not through any searching on my part, I had happened to strike a place where none of the other-world brutes lived; I had been prepared to see a number of them here, but only found the lowly humans I have spoken of. I spent my first evening in going over my clothing and other possessions, ripping out name tags, obliterating initials, and cleaning off fingerprints. I would not be trapped again as I had nearly been in Manchester. * * * * * The second day and the early evening thereof I walked through the streets, thinking furiously. And the only conclusions I could come to anent my problems were bitter and lonely and hopeless. Going "home" about eight o'clock, I wandered into the parlor and was accosted diffidently by a very low-looking form of life, which begged the pleasure of my company in a nearby hooch hut. I agreed. I would have stood drinks to a wolverine if the creature would have listened to me. I was starved for speech. When I had bought him a few rounds, his taste running to that noble old British concoction, a four-o'-gin-hot, we began to talk freely: of anything, the weather, the latest race results, the difficulty of getting "real prime raw gin".... He was a curious fellow. The name he gave me was Arold Smiff, which I imagine had once been Harold Smith; he was small and stringy and of a tobacco-brown hue, with eyes in which liquor-broken veins had long since stained the irises and the white to an all-over muddy-crimson. He stank like a shebeen, his breath would have shriveled a brass monkey, but I soon noticed something really odd about him--he did not seem to be at all intoxicated. I made bold to comment on this. "Why, General," he said, grinning wryly, "fak is, I been lushed for so long, I can't get lushed any more hardly at all. You ever had the snykes?" I shook my head. He nodded wisely. "Ar, I thought not. You're clarss. Me, I got a permanent case of 'em, bloody snykes and 'orrors all the tyme. You wouldn't know what it's lyke, General, seeing such 'orrors all the bloody damn tyme." _Would I not, I said to myself, oh, would I not!_