nothing but a couple of cheap chairs, a rickety table--unpawnable. A
boy, he was hardly more than that, perhaps twenty-two, from a posture
in which he was huddled across the table with head buried in out-flung
arms, sprang with a startled cry to his feet.

"Good-morning," said Jimmie Dale again. "Your name's Hagan, Bert
Hagan--isn't it? And you work for Isaac Brolsky in the secondhand shop
over on West Broadway--don't you?"

The boy's lips quivered, and the gaunt, hollow, half-starved face,
white, ashen-white now, was pitiful.

"I--I guess you got me," he faltered "I--I suppose you're a
plain-clothes man, though I never knew dicks wore masks."

"They don't generally," said Jimmie Dale coolly. "It's a fad of
mine--Bert Hagan."

The lad, hanging to the table, turned his head away for a moment--and
there was silence.

Presently Hagan spoke again. "I'll go," he said numbly. "I won't make any
trouble. Would--would you mind not speaking loud? I--I wouldn't like her
to know."

"Her?" said Jimmie Dale softly.

The boy tiptoed across the room, opened a connecting door a little,
peered inside, opened it a little wider--and looked over his shoulder at
Jimmie Dale.