In his last novel, “The Sunless Treasure” (to his own mind his greatest), young Humphrey stands but a moment hesitating before the oaken door, believing his enemies to be behind it with ready daggers. He hesitates but a moment. The die is cast. He enters. His enemies are not there. But Mrs. Tibbett seemed different. For instance, she would be there. The house frontage of this, like the house frontage of the fatal next block, was various, of brick, brownstone or dingy white surface, with doorways at the top of high steps, doorways on the ground level, doorways flush with the front, or sunken in pits. Not a light in any window, not a battlement that on its restless front bore a star, but each house stood grim as Child Roland's squat tower. The incessant snowflakes fell past, no motion or method of any Byzantine palace intrigue so silken, so noiseless, so mysterious in beginnings and results. All these locked caskets wedged together contained problems and solutions, to which Bassanio's was a simple chance of three with a pointed hint. Noel decided that Tenth Street was too large for a story. It was a literature. One must select. Meanwhile the snow fell and lay thickly, and there was no doubt that by persistent standing in the snow one's feet became wet. He stepped into the nearest doorway, which was on the level of the street, one of three doorways alike, all low, arched and deep. They would be less noticeable in the daytime than in the night, when their cavernous gaping and exact repetition seemed either ominous or grotesque, according to the observer. The outer door was open. He felt his way in beyond the drift to the hard footing of the vestibule, kicked his shoes free of snow and brushed his beard. The heroes of novels were sometimes hungry and houseless, but it seemed to Noel that they seldom or never faced a problem such as Mrs. Tibbett presented. Desperate fortunes should be carried on the point of one's sword, but with Mrs. Tibbett the point was not to provoke her. She was incongruous. She must be thrust aside, put out of the plot. He made a gesture dismissing Mrs. Tibbett. His hand in the darkness struck the jamb of the inner door, which swung back with a click of the half-caught latch. His heart thumped, and he peered into the darkness, where a thin yellow pencil of light stretched level from a keyhole at the farther end of a long hall. Dismissing Mrs. Tibbett, it was a position of dramatic advantage to stand in so dark and deep an arched entrance, between the silence and incessant motion of the snow on the one hand, and the yellow pencil of light, pointing significantly to something unknown, some crisis of fortune. He felt himself in a tale that had both force and form, responsible for its progress.