landing to avoid collision with a heavy body descending. He inquired
Miss Filbert's whereabouts from this person, who providentially lighted
a cigar, disclosing himself a bald Armenian in tusser silk trousers and
a dirty shirt, presumably, Lindsay thought, the landlord. At all events,
he had the information. Lindsay was to keep straight on; it was the
third story, "and a lovelie airie flat, too, sir, for this part of the
town." Duff kept straight on in a spirit of caution and just missed
treading upon the fattest rat in the heathen parish of St. John's. At
the top he saw a light and hastened; it shone from an open door at the
side of a passage. The partition in which the door was came considerably
short of the ceiling, and from the top of it to the window opposite
stretched a line of garments to dry, of pungent odour and infantile
pattern. Lindsay dared no further, but lifted up his voice in the Indian
way to summon a servant. "_Qui hai!_"[3] he called; "_Qui hai!_"

[Footnote 2: Festival-making women.]

[Footnote 3: "Whoever is there!"]

He heard somewhere within the noise of a chair pushed back, and a door
further down the passage opened outwards, disclosing Laura Filbert with
her hand upon the handle. She made a supple, graceful picture. "Good
evening, Mr. Lindsay," she said as he advanced. "Won't you come in?" She
clung to the handle until he had passed into the room, then she closed
the door after him. "I was expecting you," she said. "Mr. Harris, let me
make you acquainted with Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Harris."

Mr. Harris was sitting sideways on one of the three cane-bottomed
chairs. He was a clumsily built youth, and he wore the private's garb of
the Salvation Army. It was apparent that he had been reading a