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HE "L" train roared and rattled on downtown past Bleecker Street, bearing its load of weary passengers still farther on into the forbidding gloom ahead.

But it was not the inclement weather which caused one man to alight with such evident reluctance at Bleecker Street. Skulking in the shadows, he allowed his fellow-passengers to precede him through the clanking exit-barriers, and several times he glanced back apprehensively over his shoulder to make certain that no one followed him down the stairway to the street level.

The whites of his eyes gleamed as he found himself held up by a stream of traffic going south; and, rather than wait, he sped along under the "L," crossed over two blocks farther up and returned to Bleecker Street on the other side; then once more he turned his back on it and hurried downtown, dodging along Wooster Street for several blocks, turning east and finally returning uptown again by way of Greene Street.

He slipped and twisted through the crowd—commuters hurrying for homeward-bound trains, errand boys, shoppers, together with that indefinite drifting mass of humanity which form the neutral background of New York. Abel Gissing merged himself into this background without effort, for there was nothing in his slim body, his thin face and shadowed eyes to distinguish him from the hundreds of under-nourished men and women who washed to and fro, up and down the streets, like refuse drifting on the bosom of a great tidal wave.

Only the glint of terror in his eyes, the nervous tension of his body, the quick hiss of an indrawn breath as a passer-by jostled him roughly, set him definitely apart from the mob. Here was a hunted thing seeking sanctuary!

Coming to Bleecker Street for the third time, Gissing looked furtively about him, hesitated, crossed the street, recrossed it; then, abruptly making up his mind at last, he pushed open the door of a dim little shop, entered and closed it quickly behind him, and stared speechlessly at the man who rose to face him.

Isaac Volk grasped the situation with the intelligence of one who has long lived by his wits, and was accustomed to turn all kinds of situations, no matter how complicated, to his own advantage.

Here was a man in the last extremity of terror! Evidently he had something to get rid of, or he would not have sought refuge in a pawn-shop; obviously he wished to be rid of it immediately and would not stay for long argument or bargaining.

The Jew's eyes narrowed, every instinct in him alert and keen; here was a bird to his hand for the plucking, and his fingers itched for the job.

Danger? A fig for the danger! Isaac Volk had been cradled and bred in the very lap of hazard; for one does not trade with the underworld, or hobnob with poisoners, thieves and cutthroats without risk. Danger he had come to need 98