Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/60



IX days later a funereal old figure came to a stop before a shabby- fronted house in a shabby New York side-street not far from Herald Square. He hesitated for a moment at the foot of an iron hand-rail, red with rust. Then he glanced pensively eastward toward Broadway, and then as pensively westward toward Eighth Avenue. Then the dolorous eyes blinked once more up at the sign-board which announced:

The next moment the man in black ascended the broken sandstone house-steps and rang the bell.

He stood in the doorway, pensive and dejected, with his rusty umbrella in his hand. About his arm was a band of crape, faded to a bottle green, and on his bespectacled face was a look of timorous audacity.

He rang again, apparently quite unconscious of 48