"The friend with whom I met you first?"
"The same."
"I shall accompany you," the young man announced, cautiously opening a side door and peering up and down a stone-flagged passage. "The way is clear, sir. Come with me."
They sallied out and found themselves in the street. The young man gripped the arm of his companion.
"For the moment," he confessed, "I am weary of poetry. I seek life. You are an adventurer, you have told me. I shall link my fortune with yours. You have a brain, sir, enterprise, and I should imagine that you are untrammelled by the modern conscience. I am in the same position. Poetry is affording me, for some time, at least, the means of sustenance. Let us go together a little further afield."
The older man looked his companion up and down. He was a strong, well-built young fellow, and the hollows of his cheeks had already filled out. Notwithstanding his mannerisms, he was without doubt a young man of resolution.
"We will see," Harvey Grimm suggested, "what Aaron Rodd has to say about it."
"I like your friend's name," the young man declared solemnly. "I am sure that he will accept me as a comrade."
They trod the few remaining yards of pavement, ascended the stone stairs, and, after a preliminary knock at the door, Harvey Grimm, exercising the privilege of familiarity, turned the handle and stepped inside, followed by his companion. For a single moment neither of them spoke. Harvey Grimm's first conscious action was to close the door behind him. Then they stood inside the apartment, transfixed. Around them was a scene of the wildest disorder. The linoleum had been torn up and thrown into a corner, planks had been torn bodily from the floor, the cupboards stood open and their contents were thrown right and left. The little row of tin boxes stood on their sides, and masses of dusty parchment littered the whole place. Seated in his chair before the desk was Aaron Rodd, with a gag in his mouth, his arms bound behind him, his legs tied together. His face was livid, his eyes half closed. He showed no signs of life at their coming. The poet produced a knife.
"We must set him free," he said.