sudden glow of yellow light athwart the sidewalk as its swinging
doors jerked apart; and a form lurched out into the night; there,
from a dance-hall came the rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of
a raspy violin, a high-pitched, hectic burst of laughter; while,
flanking the street on each side, like interjected inanimate
blotches, rows of squalid tenements and cheap, tumble-down frame
houses silhouetted themselves in broken, jagged points against
the sky-line. And now and then a man spoke to her - his untrained
fingers fumbling in clumsy homage at the brim of his hat.

How strange a thing memory was! How strange, too, the coincidences
that sometimes roused it into activity! It was a man, a thief, just
like the man to-night, who had first brought her here into this
shadowland of crime. That was just before her father had died. Her
father had been a mining engineer, and, though an American, had been
for many years resident in South America as the representative of a
large English concern. He had been in ill health for a year down
there, when, acting on his physician's advice, he had come to New
York for consultation, and she had accompanied him. They had taken
a little flat, the engineer had placed himself in the hands of a
famous specialist, and an operation had been decided upon. And
then, a few days prior to the date set for the operation and before
her father, who was still able to be about, had entered the hospital,
the flat had been broken into during the early morning hours. The
thief, obviously not counting on the engineer's wakefulness, had
been caught red-handed. At first defiant, the man had finally
broken down, and had told a miserable story. It was hackneyed
possibly, the same story told by a thousand others as a last defense
in the hope of inducing leniency through an appeal to pity, but
somehow to her that night the story had rung true. Pete McGee,