Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/21

 with the unlovely resort of which it was a part—and it was closed.

The Flopper rang no bell. After a quick glance around him to assure himself that he was not observed, he reached up for the doorknob, turned it, and with surprising agility hopped over the threshold and closed the door behind him.

A staircase, making one side of a narrow and dimly lighted hall, from down whose length came muffled sounds from the barroom, was before him; and this, without hesitation, the Flopper began to mount, his knee thumping from step to step, his dangling leg echoing the sound in a peculiar quick double thump. He reached the first landing, went along it, and started up the second flight—but now the thumping sound he made seemed accentuated intentionally, and upon his face there spread a grin of malicious humor.

He halted before the door opposite the head of the second flight of stairs, opened it, wriggled inside and shut it behind him.

"Hullo, Helena!" he snickered. "Pipe me comin'?"

The room was a fairly large one, gaudily appointed with cheap furnishings, one of the Roost's private parlors—a girl on a couch in the corner had raised herself on her elbow, and her dark eyes were fixed uncompromisingly upon the Flopper, but she made no answer.

The Flopper laughed—then a spasm seemed to run through him, a horrible boneless contortion of limbs and body, a slippery, twitching