Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/68

 Gregg jumped down and took the narrow walk to the rear of the building; finding there the usual, outside stair to a tier of three back porches, he ran up to the third and found himself outside an ordinary back door of deal, with a glass pane in the upper half. A light was burning on the other side but a yellow blind had been pulled down over the glass. He heard a buzzer, undoubtedly rung by Marjorie and Billy at the front entrance. No one seemed to make reply; indeed, there was no other sound from the apartment and when Gregg pressed the button beside the door, he merely set going another buzzer without rousing response; so he tried the knob and found, as he expected, that the door was locked. A window a few feet off at the end of the porch also was locked and its shade was down. Gregg returned to the door and pounded upon it, still receiving no response and hearing only the continued signal from the vestibule bell. So he picked up an empty milk bottle from the porch and struck it through the pane above the knob and reached in, unbolted the door, opened it and stepped into the kitchen. He had closed the door behind him and advanced half-way across the room before a swinging door on the other side was pushed open and a young woman appeared.

She was quivering with fright and her eyes were red from crying; but Gregg hardly thought of her state. For the instant, indeed, he was not chiefly anxious as to whether Charles Hale was living or dead. What was above everything else to him at that moment was the type of woman he found here; and his pulse leaped with relief at what he saw. He had not been simple enough to suppose that all women, who lived like Mrs. Russell, showed themselves for what they