dotted with steamers and sailing craft, and edged about with huge piers, where the great ocean liners dock, and busy wharves, the goal of the hardy fishermen, as they come driving home across the foam, lee rails awash, deep laden with their spoils hard won from the open sea.

So far, indeed, one may journey with naught save admiration and respect for civic pride; but farther to the northeast, across the bay, there lies a region of a far more doubtful sort. Here, dark and dreary and sinister, begins that inevitable portion of a great city, at the mention of which women are wont to raise their eyebrows, and men—of a certain stamp—to shrug their shoulders and smile meaningly. Here is the abiding place of those who for many varying reasons prefer to live in a district unhampered by the authorities; a place where each is a law unto himself alone; where the red blood pulses more swiftly through the veins, and where the primal passions of men and women hold freer sway.

To this wilderness in the otherwise well-ordered city, from time to time wander men of birth and breeding from the opposite end of town. Some of them come from real love of vice, due perchance to some inherited taint, perchance to some flaw or weakness in themselves. Others, for the most part younger men, fresh from school or college, come with a vague idea that they are thus seeing life, and earning for themselves the right to be classed as men of the world. A few, indeed, come out of mere curiosity, mere slummers, pleased and risen in their own estimation to find others so much wickeder and more miserably off than themselves.

The great majority, however, desirous of standing well in their own circle, deem it wise to let the district severely alone, for in the faintly Puritanical atmosphere south of the park to have it known that one has even been seen north of Fulton Street means always a possibility of ill-natured gossip and even of unpleasant scandal.

Therefore, on the night after the dinner at the Albemarle, if any one of Gordon's friends had chanced to follow him as he crossed the park, they would have had good cause for surprise, for, instead of following the avenue, or turning sharp to the west, he kept straight on northward, past the cove, past Fulton Street, almost to the bridge, and then, with one quick glance behind him, swung around to the east in a wide half-circle, finally turning up a little, narrow, unfrequented side street at the very limits of the city, beyond which the broad salt marshes stretched away until their outline was lost as they merged with the flats that bordered the broad tide-river flowing peacefully onward towards the sea.

A good place, one would have said, for carrying on some business not quite within the pale of the law, and so Jim Bradfield evidently thought when he chose the spot for the establishment of his gambling-house. Not that at the present time there was any great danger of a raid, the city, following one of its periodic "citizens' movements," with its accompanying spasm of virtue, having suffered a violent relapse, and fallen again into the hands of the spoilers, who, with a praiseworthy desire to make up for much valuable lost time, had issued orders near and far that everything was to be run "wide open."

Bradfield, however, shrewd and far-sighted, had never been over-anxious for that down-town notoriety which was sure to result in a flourishing business during the reign of some particular "boss" or "machine," and then, when the forces of reform again had their little day, was equally sure to mean a quick decision between an immediate change of climate or an involuntary visit to the handsome new prison across the bay. Rather, he desired to keep his trade quiet, safe, and, above all, sure, realizing the manifest advantages of a business which needed for stock-in-trade only his modest house, a good supply of liquor, a complete gambling outfit, and last, but not least, the patronage of a score or so of the city's beautiful and accommodating lights-o'-love. His creed was equally simple, philosophical and sound. Often, indeed, he was wont to observe: "Most trades run too much to seasons and fashions, but I figure mine pretty sure. Year in and year out men are going to gamble, they're going to drink rum, and they're going to run after the girls, and if I'm willing to take a chance on combining the three of 'em, and giving every sport a run for his money, why, where's the kick coming?"

The readiness with which Gordon ran up the steps and pressed the bell seemed to show that he was no stranger to his surroundings. A short, broad-shouldered, burly man, built ideally on the lines of a rough and tumble fighter, stepped to the iron grating in the thick oak door, peered sullenly out for a moment, and then released a spring, allowing the ponderous door to swing slowly back. Rather a needless amount of precaution, perhaps, in times of peace and ample police protection, but Bradfield, as we have seen, was a believer in system, and took no chances. Hence his enviable record for immunity from raiding parties, and his steadily accumulating balance at the bank.

With a nod to the guard, Gordon mounted the stairs, turned sharp to the right, and entered the café. It was still early in the night, and not more than a dozen or so of the little round tables were occupied. The men, as a rule, were sleek, well-fed, prosperous in appearance, with a tendency towards flashiness in their general get-up; the women were of the type to be expected in such a place, or rather, perhaps, on the whole, somewhat above it. All were young and well-dressed, many were pretty, and in some cases it needed a keener second glance to detect that inevitable hardness of expression and that trace of artificiality in their somewhat too obvious high spirits which mark the world over the calling of the lower-class courtezan.

Over in the corner by the window, however, half hidden in the shelter of a huge palm, sat a young girl of a type entirely different from the rest. Seated alone, the chair opposite her tipped forward against the table as a sign that she was not anxious for company, she sat with elbows on table, chin in hands, gazing with a look of bored indifference at the evidently only too familiar scene. Slender, blonde, possibly a shade too pale, her dress of filmy black lace, her dainty black gloves, her big black picture hat with its sweeping black ostrich plume, all showed an instinctive sense of good taste conspicuously absent in the costumes of her companions. So much for the first general impression. Coming to the girl herself, on closer examination one discovered with some surprise that she was undeniably beautiful. Her features were flawless, her pretty light hair was tastefully arranged over her low forehead, her blue eyes flashed a dangerous gleam from beneath her long lashes, and her red lips seemed framed in a perpetual challenge to the daring of mankind. More than this, one could not rid oneself of the impression that the girl's face, in spite of everything, was somehow a good face; the face of one who, if sinning, did so all but unconscious of the sin.

As Gordon entered, she leisurely assumed a more conventional pose, while he, with a quick glance in her direction, threaded his way across the room, and with a word of greeting dropped into the vacant seat.

It was evident from the whole manner of both that the meeting was no mere casual one, but that it had been planned for some definite purpose. Any doubt of this, indeed, was dispelled by Gordon's first words.

"Well," he queried, leaning forward across the table and lowering his voice a trifle, "did you get what we wanted?"

The girl, with evident complacence, slowly nodded. "I have found out," she said, "the whole story. He may be a very shrewd man in some ways, but in others he is—well, let us say vulnerable."