“Now remember,” he said, “light out at ten o’clock, and no going downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke.  When you do, it’s my pipe.”

“I don’t think you hardly ever go to bed, Willy.”

“Me?  Get too much sleep.  I’m getting fat with it.”

The stale little joke was never stale with her.  He left her smiling, and went down the stairs and out into the street.

He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find out from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd’s accusation.  He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did anything.  Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men.  If he could get the facts from Louis Akers—­but he had no idea of what he would do then.  He couldn’t very well tell Lily, but her people might do something.  Or Mrs. Doyle.

He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than marry Akers, under the circumstances.  That her failure to marry Louis Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never even considered.  All that had been settled long ago, when she said she did not love him.

At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an hour or two he walked the streets.  The city seemed less majestic to him than usual; its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it is true, but those very streets hid also vice and degradation, and ugly passions.  They sheltered, but also they concealed.

At eleven o’clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that Mr. Akers had come in.

It was Akers himself who opened the door.  Because the night was hot he had shed coat and shirt, and his fine torso, bare to the shoulders and at the neck, gleamed in the electric light.  Willy Cameron had not seen him since those spring days when he had made his casual, bold-eyed visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he had a swift insight into the power this man must have over women.  He himself was tall; but Akers was taller, fully muscled, his head strongly set on a neck like a column.  But he surmised that the man was soft, out of condition.  And he had lost the first elasticity of youth.

Akers’ expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when he opened the door.

“Well!” he said.  “Making a late call, aren’t you?”

“What I had to say wouldn’t wait.”

Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in.  The room was very hot, for a small fire, littered as to its edges with papers, burned in the grate.  Although he knew that Akers had guessed the meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two when each sparred for an opening.

“Sit down.  Have a cigarette?”

“No, thanks.”  He remained standing.

“Or a high-ball?  I still have some fairly good whiskey.”

“No.  I came to ask you a question, Mr. Akers.”