“What did you say?” inquired Janet, curiously.

“Say?” repeated Mr. Tiernan.  “It’s not much I had to say, Miss Janet.  I was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss.  I’m guessing he won’t take much pleasure on this trip.”

She asked for no more details.

CHAPTER XIII

Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows of boarding—­and rooming-houses.  They alighted at a certain corner, walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps.  Climbing these, he pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face like a fungus grown in darkness.

“I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus,” Mr. Tiernan demanded.

“You’ve got the wrong place.  There ain’t no one of that name here,” said the woman.

“There ain’t!  All right,” he insisted aggressively, pushing open the door in spite of her.  “If you don’t let this young lady see her quick, there’s trouble coming to you.”

“Who are you?” asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear.

“Never mind who I am,” Mr. Tiernan declared.  “I know all about you, and I know all about Duval.  If you don’t want any trouble you won’t make any, and you’ll take this young lady to her sister.  I’ll wait here for you, Miss Janet,” he added.

“I don’t know nothing about her—­she rented my room that’s all I know,” the woman replied sullenly.  “If you mean that couple that came here yesterday—­”

She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed, nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below, seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil.  A terror seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day.  In the dark hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front room.

“She’s in there, unless she’s gone out.”  And indeed a voice was heard petulantly demanding what was wanted—­Lise’s voice!  Janet hesitated, her hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels.  Then, as she pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly photographed on her mind—­the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the mantel