McPhillip walked about from one table to another, his cigarette in his left hand, the fingers of his right hand clutching the butt of his automatic, between the two top buttons of his raincoat. Nobody noticed him. The melancholy eyes, that were raised casually to look, saw only another shabby wreck like themselves. Even had his identity been suddenly disclosed by means of a loud trumpet to the men in that room, it is questionable whether the news would have occasioned excitement in more than a few breasts. Casual workers, casual criminals and broken old men, their connection with the ordered scheme of civilized life, with its moral laws and its horror of crime, was so thin and weak that they were unable to feel the interest that murder arouses in the tender breasts of our wives and sisters. McPhillip examined the room carefully without discovering what he wanted. Then he walked out into the corridor again. He entered another room that was used by the occupants of the lodging-house for the purpose of writing letters. That room was empty. Then he descended a stairway to the lavatories and bathrooms. Here men were shaving and washing themselves. He walked about and discovered nobody. He came up again into the corridor and entered the dining-room. The dining-room was very large and furnished with small deal tables and long forms of the same material. The wooden floor was covered with sawdust, like the floor of a slum public-house. Here and there the sawdust was mixed with refuse that had been swept from the tables. At the far end of the room a great number of men were gathered around an immense range, some with frying-pans in their hands awaiting their turn to cook, others rushing about attending to cooking utensils that were already on the range. They all had knives, spoons and forks in their hands. They were jostling, perspiring, cursing, laughing and scratching themselves. There was a great din of voices and a smell of food and of human bodies. At the other end of the room there was a counter and behind the counter a large bright kitchen, shining bright with white crockery, polished brasses and the clean white uniforms of the women who served in it. Three young women were there cooking and serving food, for the lodgers who had not the means or the inclination to prepare their own food. These lodgers stood at the counter buying tea, bread and butter, cooked eggs and meat. They also purchased knives, forks, spoons and salt, because these necessities were not provided by the management in the lodging-house, owing to the moral character of the lodgers, except on payment of a fixed sum, which was returned at the conclusion of the meal, when the articles were handed back at the counter. McPhillip walked down across the room to the far side. He had seen the man he sought at the first glance. He walked straight to a table by the wall at the far side. At that table a young man of thirty or so was eating his supper.