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“You mustn’t judge by first appearances,” he was explaining with a false and transparent attempt at matter-of-factness as he came into the zone of illumination. “I’m not what I seem, exactly. You see, I—-“

“Mushiful Evans!” The exclamation was half shrieked, half gasped out; and on the words the window was slammed to, the light within flipped out, and through the glass from within came a vehement warning.

“Get away, you–you lunatic! Get away from here now or I’ll have the cops on you.”

“But please, please listen,” he entreated, with his face close against the bars. “I assure you, madam, that I can explain everything if you will only listen.”

There was no mercy, no suggestion of relenting in the threatening message that came back to him.

“If you ain’t gone from here in ten seconts I’ll ring for the night watchman on the block, and I’ll blow a whistle for the police. I’ve got me hand on the alarm hook right now. Will you go or will I rouse the whole block?”

“Pray be calm, madam, I’ll go. In fact, I’m going now.”

He fell back out of the areaway. Fresh uproar at this critical juncture would be doubly direful. It would almost certainly bring the vengeful Switzer, with his bruised shanks. It would inevitably bring some one.

X

Mr. Leary retreated to the sidewalk, figuratively casting from him the shards and potsherds of his reawakened anticipations, now all so rudely shattered again. He was doomed. It would inevitably be his fate to cower in these cold and drafty purlieus until—-

No, it wouldn’t either!

Like a golden rift in a sable sky a brand-new ray of cheer opened before him. Who were those married friends of Slack’s, who lived on the third floor–friends with whom once upon a time he and Slack had shared a chafing-dish supper? What was the name? Brady? No, Braydon. That was it–Mr. and Mrs. Edward Braydon. He would slip back again, on noiseless feet, to the doorway where the bells were. He would bide there until the startled caretaker had gone back to her sleep, or at least to her bed. Then he would play a solo on the Braydons’ bell until he roused them. They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be only too glad to give him shelter from the elements until Bob Slack returned from his session at bridge. He was saved!

Within the coping of the stoop he crouched and waited–waited for five long palpitating minutes which seemed to him as hours. Then he applied an eager and quivering finger to the Braydons’ button. Sweet boon of vouchsafed mercy! Almost instantly the latch clicked. And now in another instant Mr. Leary was within solid walls, with the world and the weather shut out behind him.

He stood a moment, palpitant with mute thanksgiving, in the hallway, which was made obscure rather than bright by a tiny pinprick of gaslight; and as thus he stood, fortifying himself with resolution for the embarrassing necessity of presenting himself, in all his show of quaint frivolity, before these comparative strangers, there came floating down the stair well to him in a sharp half-whisper a woman’s voice.

“Is that you?” it asked.

“Yes,” answered Mr. Leary, truthfully. It was indeed he, Algernon Leary, even though someone else seemingly was expected. But the explanation could wait until he was safely upstairs. Indeed, it must wait. Attempted at a distance it would take on rather a complicated aspect; besides, the caretaker just below might overhear, and by untoward interruptions complicate a position already sufficiently delicate and difficult.

Down from above came the response, “All right then. I’ve been worried, you were so late coming in, Edward. Please slip in quietly and take the front room. I’m going on back to bed.”