Sometimes office boys were impertinent, and an occasional business man
was insolent and talked of throwing the suppliant out of the window, but
Mr. Rowbottom was always suave and conciliatory. He seemed to sympathise
with the angry individual whose privacy he was forced to break in pursuit
of a sacred duty.

Nickie the Kid reached the fourth floor. It was very quiet, and most of
the offices were deserted. He found a pale young typewriter, a slave of
the machine, in a room rather larger than an alderman's coffin, and
obtained threepence in coppers for the widow and family of the late
lamented William John Elphinston. He passed along a dim passage, and came
to one of the larger apartments fronting the main street. It was
evidently one of a suite. On the door was a brass plate bearing the name.
"Henry Berryman."

The Rev. Andrew Rowbottom knocked on his door a meek, appealing summons.
He received no reply. Confident that he had heard a movement in the room
Andrew knocked again. Still on answer. The Rev Andrew Rowbottorn turned
the knob, opened the door a foot or so, and thrust his benignant
countenance into the room.

The face when it first appeared to the occupant was lit with a smile,
suffused with a tender benevolence, a moment later it was stark and
white, drawn with horror, a horror that chilled the blood, and gripped at
the heart with a hand of iron.

What the Rev. Andrew Rowbottom saw was a tall, handsome,
fashionably-dressed woman of about thirty-six resting with her back to an
office table, the position was crouching, her fingers clung to the
table's edge; her eyes, large, dark, and instinct with mortal terror,