into a dark alleyway--there was, of course, as there was to all such
places, an unobtrusive entrance to Malay John's.

His lips tightened a little as he moved quietly forward. To venture here
in an unknown character was not far from being tantamount, if he were
discovered, to taking his life in his hands. Malay John was a queer
customer and a bad enemy, though counted "straight" by the underworld,
and trusted by the crooks and near-crooks as few other men were in the
Bad Lands. And, if Malay John was queer, the place he ran was queerer
still. Ostensibly he conducted a dance hall, and a profitable one at
that; but below the dance hall, known only to the initiated, deep down
in a sub-cellar, was perhaps the most remunerative gambling joint and
pipe lay-out in Crimeland.

Jimmie Dale halted before a doorway in the alley. The rear of a low
building rose black and unlighted above him. A confused jangle from a
tinny piano, accompanying a blatant cornet and a squeaky violin, mingled
with the dull scrape of many feet, laughter, voices, singing--the dance
hall at the front of the building was in full swing. He glanced sharply
up and down the dark alleyway, then, leaning forward, placed his ear to
the panel of the door--and the next instant opened the door softly and
stepped inside.

It was pitch black here, but it was familiar ground to Larry the Bat in
the old days, and therefore to Smarlinghue in the new. The short
passageway in which he was standing terminated, he knew, in a rear
entrance to the dance hall, which was always kept locked and used only
by Malay John himself, and which was just at the foot of the stairs that
led upward to Malay John's combination of private den, office, and
sleeping apartment; while at the side of the passage, half way along,