He felt perilously on the verge of tears—­would gladly have bawled and howled with temper—­and gained little relief from another short-lived break of heartfelt profanity—­something halting and inexpert, truth to tell.

Above him, on the stoop, the lady of the house appeared; paused to peer searchingly east and west; looked down at the trembling figure of the small man in his overgrown police tunic, shaking an impotent fist in the face of the City of New York; and laughed quietly to herself.

“Come back,” she called in a guarded tone.  “He’s made a clean getaway.  Got to hand him that.  No use trying to follow—­you’d never catch up in a thousand years.  Come back—­d’you hear?—­and give me my gun!”

A trifle dashed, P. Sybarite raked the street with final reluctant glances; then in a spirit of witless and unquestioning docility returned.

The woman retired to the vestibule, where she closed and locked the door as he passed through, further ensuring security by means of a chain-bolt; then entering the hallway, closed, locked, and similarly bolted the inner doors.

“Now, then!” she addressed the little man with a brilliant smile—­“now we can pow-wow.  Come into the den”—­and led the way toward the rear of the house.

Trotting submissively in her wake, his wrinkled nose and batting eyelids were eloquent of the dumb amaze with which he was reviewing this incredible affair.

Turning into a dark doorway, the woman switched light into an electric dome, illuminating an interior apartment transformed, by a wildly original taste in eccentric decoration, into a lounging room of such distressful uniquity that it would have bred unrest in the soul of a lotus-eater.

Black, red, and gold—­lustreless black of coke, lurid crimson of fresh blood, bright glaring yellow of gold new-minted—­were the predominant notes in a colour scheme at once sombre and violent.  The walls were hung with scarlet tapestries whereon gold dragons crawled and fought or strove to swallow dead black planets, while on every hand black imps of Eblis writhed and struggled over golden screens, golden devils mocked and mowed from panels of cinnabar, and horrific masks of crimson lacquer, picked out with gold and black, leered and snarled dumb menaces from darkened corners.

In such a room as this the mildest mannered man, steeping his soul in the solace of mellow tobacco, might have been pardoned for dreaming lustfully of battle, murder and sudden death, or for contemplating with entire equanimity the tortured squirmings of some favourite enemy upon the rack.

“Cosy little hole,” P. Sybarite couldn’t forbear to comment with a shudder as he dropped into a chair in compliance with the woman’s gesture.

“I have my whims,” she said.  “How would you like a drink?”

“Not at all,” he insisted hastily.  “I’ve had all I need for the time being.”

“That’s a mercy,” she replied.  “I don’t much feel like waiting on you myself, and the servants are all abed.”