The door bumped shut behind him, and she was alone again.... But now there was a new fear to face--something that she'd never thought would come into her own life, often as it occurred in the pages of the novelist. The tightest corner she'd ever been in.... She tried to stay the involuntary quivering of her lips. The hot defilement of Mecklen's embrace seemed to sully them still, and she got out her handkerchief and rubbed them with it. Death itself she could have met with a proud contempt, but that.... She sank on to the mattress he had brought and buried her face in her hands. She was ... desperately ... _afraid_.... Lew went stumbling up the cellar stairs with a burning exaltation skipping about like a lump of molten lead in his rotten heart. He passed through the stairs into the back hall, and was confronted by a small man whose ferrety face was drawn and haggard. "Lew!" The little man grabbed Mecklen's sleeve convulsively. "Lew--I--I saw yer go dahn wiv a bundle 'f beddin' an' then yer went agayne wiv a table 'n' grub. I was on the front stairs, an' I saw yer!" Mecklen rested his hands on his hips. "So li'l' Birdie sore ole Lew," he grated. "Did yew!" "Yes. Wot's it mean--wot's it _mean_?" Birdie seemed almost frantic. His normally sallow complexion was ashen, and he was shaking horribly, like a man with ague, and an ugly look came into the gunman's eyes. "Air thet enny perticlar concern o' yores?" he drawled, leaning forward so that his out-thrust jaw almost touched Birdie's nose. "Yes--I don't understand! _Lew_! Why're yer lookin' at me like that? My Gawd...." A shifting light of madness was coming into Birdie's staring eyes. "Lew! _'Oo's dahn there?_ ..." "Yew li'l' four-flushin' piker!" snarled Mecklen. His huge hands were clawing out for Birdie's throat. They found their hold and, crushing the pickpocket's scraggy neck in that boa-constrictor twist, Mecklen shook him as a Great Dane might shake a poodle. "Yew li'l' _runt_!" "Lew!" It was Morini's voice, hard and imperative. Mecklen took no notice until the butt of a gun struck him a stinging blow between the eyes. Lew staggered back and Morini fronted him, having reversed his automatic to the business position. "Gat, yew vamoose! Wot's bitin' yuh----" "You've gone loco," Morini cut in with no suavity. "What're you fightin' for? If the Chief heard of this you'd be fired right out into the streets, where half the bulls in London are watching to draw a bead on you. Out with it--what's the trouble?" "Thet li'l' critter----" "Well?" But Mecklen, aware that he had made a blunder in saying even that much, had relapsed into a glowering silence. Morini turned to Sands, who was cringing against the wall, grasping and rubbing his throat where Lew's fingers had left thick scarlet weals. "What did you do, Birdie?" Sands was crouching back, and then he made a sudden dive for the door. "I'll show yer!" he cried, and bolted down the cellar steps.