Prologue

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      The door shook, and there was the dull thump of heavy impact, as if the panels had been struck by a sack of meal. Old Sullivan, reading his paper behind the flat desk in the far corner, did not look up. That was the manner in which most of his guests came in. Simpson, who had signed the register and was on his way to the sleeping quarters, paused and turned his purplish face toward the door that had been shaken by the blow. Keener witted than most of the derelicts who drifted into this house of refuge, he wondered whether the place could furnish him amusement. Also, he was making a mental bet that there could come in nobody more wretched looking than he.

      After a short, dead silence outside, there followed the sound of hard flesh and rough fingernails scraping and clawing on the woodwork. The door swung in very slowly, and that which had sounded like a sack of meal stood wavering in the opening, like a spectre, his right shoulder against the door-jamb, his left hand still on the knob. He trembled visibly, and, without removing his shoulder from the wood against which he leaned, passed his right hand wearily across his forehead, the long, pale fingers moving loosely against his coal-black, tangled hair. He wore no hat. His beard, a week old, completed the dark, circular frame for his dead-white face, made all the ghastlier by the big, fever-lit eyes.

      The eyes were terrific. They had in them the flame of terror. It was as if the fierceness of it lighted up all the badges of misery that he wore. His collar was gone, showing the neckband of his shirt fastened with a bone collar-button. The rusty coat hung open, exposing a tear in his shirt just over his heart, and from the right cuff of his coat sleeve, as he moved his hand with that peculiar, crawling motion, dangled a long piece of cloth. His trousers, baggy and shapeless, flapped slightly as his knees knocked together. His clothes, too big for him, made him look like a draped skeleton. His torn shoes spread out as if they had been filled with mush.

      The terror that was in his eyes was also in his heart. It was more apparent, more real, than any terror that had ever faced Simpson the bum, or old Sullivan. It was something supernatural—something ghostly.

      Simpson shivered.

      Sullivan, who had let his paper slide noisily to the floor, got to his feet.

      "Hello!" he said, trying to make the word a mere greeting. In reality it was a command to the stranger to speak, to banish the spectral impression.

      The trembling man sprang into the room with the agility of a cat, slammed the door shut, and fell hard with his back against it. He looked like one who has run a great distance and makes one last effort to escape pursuit. His burning eyes glanced at Simpson and then at the few articles in the barely furnished room, but they took no knowledge of what