It is a name cheap as the grimness of a toothless woman.

Mr. Barkeeper had something to say, I imagined.

I offered a stem of cigarette.

“Do you ever hear a bloody cry at night?” he began his chapter, gathering a medley of gravity on his brow.

“Scream? No!”

“Never mind!”

He turned aside. I thought he was playing a threadbare artifice of a story-teller to tantalise my fancy.

“Tell me why!”

I knew I became his victim.

“I fear I do scare you.”