Entirely unaware that she had been observed, Helen Gilmore slipped furtively into the dark, musty vestibule of the ugly house. There were those unpleasant odors which accumulate in a decaying house, the smell that suggests neglect. The opening of the second door automatically set a bell ringing, an unpleasant jangling that caused the woman to start and compress her lips, shutting back the nervous gasp which rose in her throat. When she closed the door the ringing stopped. After a wait of a moment there came down the raggedly carpeted stairs a slovenly and haglike female, with straggling hair of dirty gray and the shoulders of a professional wrestler in their muscular broadness. The face of the slattern was, until she reached the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows. At the sight of it Helen instinctively retreated a step; she had never seen such a terrible face, she thought. A pair of narrow red eyes looked her up and down with appraising, impudent curiosity. "Perhaps--perhaps I've made a mistake," Helen stammered. "I thought this was the right number; I--I wanted to see Don Haskins." "You ain't made no mistake," came the response in a hoarse guttural. "He's upstairs. He told me he was lookin' fer comp'ny. Guess you're the swell sister he was tellin' me about." "Y-yes," Helen answered faintly. "Go right on up, deary; it's the thoid floor--the door at the end of the hall, the door with a busted panel, where the cops broke in. They thought, it bein' locked, Terry Mooney was there, but he wasn't." Her voice broke into a peal of cackling mirth. "No, he wasn't there; he was--somewheres else." Starting toward the stairs, Helen turned, one hand resting upon the ancient rail. "Then Don is wanted by--by the cops?" "Ask him," grunted the woman with the gargoyle face; "ask him. I'll say he is, deary." Helen went tremulously up the stairs, stumbled about the dark hallway until she found the second flight, which was narrow and, if possible, dirtier than the first. Here the boards were loose and clattered noisily beneath her step. Reaching the third floor, a bit of sun struggled feebly through the dust-filmed skylight and fell slantwise across the door with the broken panel, now patched with some unpainted strips torn from a chance packing box. The occupant of the room had heard her approach--only a deaf man could have failed to be notified by the clatter of the loose stairway boards--for the door opened cautiously, and a haggard unshaven face looked out through a widening crack. A pair of thin lips twisted back into an unpleasant and gloating triumphant grin. "So--so you've come, have you?" the man rasped and laughed harshly. "I thought you would. I give you credit for havin' that much sense. Real prompt, ain't you? Only mailed the letter yesterday." He moved back, making room for her to enter. His eyes, hard and glittering, followed her with a look of venomous hate that was at the same time one of admiration, as if her beauty stirred him.