The door of No. Twelve, the only other flat on the same landing, opened, and a man appeared. Recognition was prompt on Winter's side. "Hello, Drake!" he said genially. "Are _you_ Signor Maselli? Well met, anyhow! Can you give me a friendly word?" The occupant of flat No. Twelve, an undersized, slightly built man of middle age, seemed to have received the shock of his life. His sallow-complexioned face assumed a greenish-yellow tint, and his deep-set eyes glistened like those of a hunted animal. "Friendly?" he contrived to gasp, giving a ghastly look over his shoulder to ascertain whether any one in the interior of the flat had heard that name "Drake." "Yes. I mean it. Strictly on the q. t.," said Winter, sinking his voice to a confidential pitch. Signor Giovanni Maselli, since that was the name modestly displayed on No. Twelve's card in the hall beneath, closed the door carefully. He appeared to trust Winter, up to a point, but evidently found it hard to regain self-control. "Not here!" he whispered. "In five minutes--at the Regency Cafe, Piccadilly. Let me go alone." Winter nodded, and the other darted downstairs. The detective followed slowly. Crossing the street at an angle, he looked up at the smoke-stained elevation of Gloucester Mansions. "A well-filled nest," he communed, "and a nice lot of prize birds in it, upon my word!" The last time he had set eyes on a certain notably expert forger and counterfeiter a judge was passing sentence of five years' penal servitude and three years' police supervision on a felon; and the judge had not addressed the prisoner as Giovanni Maselli, but as John Christopher Drake! CHAPTER VIII COINCIDENCES Winter was blessed with an unfailing memory for dates and faces. Before he had emerged from the main exit of Gloucester Mansions he had fixed Drake as committed from the Old Bailey during the Summer assizes four years earlier, released from Portland on ticket of leave at the beginning of the current year, and marked in the "failure to report" list. "Poor devil!" he said to himself. "The very man for my purpose!" Therefore, seeing his way clearly, his glance was not so encouraging nor his voice so pleasant when he found the ex-convict awaiting him in the Regency Cafe. Nevertheless, obeying the curious code which links the police and noted criminals in a sort of _camaraderie_, he asked the man what he would drink, and ordered cigarettes as well. "Now, Maselli," he said, when they were seated at a marble-topped table in a corner of a well-filled room, "since we know each other so well we can converse plainly, eh?" "Yes, sir, but I'm done for now. I've been trying to earn an honest living, and have succeeded, but now----" The man spoke brokenly. His spirit was crushed. He saw in his mind's eye the frowning portals of a convict settlement, and heard the boom of a giant knocker reverberating through gaunt aisles of despair.