siren registering temptation. She was a natural, all right. A natural temptress.
Just to be on the safe side, I left a note on my dresser, a signed and sealed and stamped envelope, addressed to the police. It told where I was going, and why. She gave me the address with a slight, hidden reluctance.
"The address is a cellar below 153 Portland St. The Baltimore Police would not find it if they did not know it was there. We go in through a store, and very seldom. Only at night, when there is no one around. We are very secret and very careful."
I noticed there was a hint of greater collaboration with these criminals than her other words had given me, but I said nothing. I signed the letter, having given all the particulars of the address and what might be found. I sealed it and stamped it just in case.
THEN we went out into the night. There was still a red light in the sky, as though the night were tainted with the bloody death of the sun. An ominous feeling crept over me which I brushed aside. I knew I was being a fool, placing myself in the power of the people who could be every bit as bad as the girl pictured. But something drove me, something in the girl's face, something in my own adventurous spirit. It was the same thing that made me loath to believe in the evil intent of any person until proven. I thought I might be able to help her, I was curious about her "witch's cradle," and no little electrified by herself, the lithe, slim body of her; the white, too-innocent face with its large, subtly provocative eyes; and the mystery that breathed about her with the strange elusive perfume of her. My imagination was clothing the sly thief with an aura of attraction because of her likeness to my dream-world Kyra. My imagination is not always correct, but it was the gift that made me the man I am. I had always followed my imagined idea of something bigger in men and women than the surface might indicate. I had sometimes been wrong.
We took a taxi to within a block of the address. The girl, perhaps from habit, had given an address that could not be traced to the hole she claimed to fear so much. My forebodings grew stronger, but I would not turn back. I was ashamed to show fear before her — or before the Kyra who lived only in my brain.
We walked the block through the red-tinged night. Through the glowering old dark hulks of houses between the rotting warehouses and vacant shops. It was a partly abandoned waterfront section. Appropriate for the kind we were calling on. I was getting plenty worried long before we arrived.
We entered a dimly lit shop. She walked straight through, past the cigar counter, past the sagging shelves full of ten-cent goods, candy, kids' stuff, work gloves, what-have-you.
There was an old woman sitting behind the counter, an evil-eyed old bulgy-figured hag, one of the foreign kind you just know has a dozen dirty petticoats on. We walked straight through around the end of the counter and into the door in the back. The woman only nodded at the girl, ignored me too entirely.
The room behind the store room was nearly empty, but the girl did not stop, started down a staircase. I followed, and we entered a big cellar. Empty barrels and broken packing cases littered the place. It was empty of life or the signs of life. She walked to the age-greened concrete of the wall, pressed on it. A section swung under her hand. We passed through and it closed behind us with a dull sound of finality. I inwardly, prayerfully, hoped it wasn't final for me.
The only thing that had kept me with this girl so far was remembering the whip marks on her back. She couldn't produce those by acting. I stayed mad about that, and I was going to do something about it first chance showed.
Through a short tunnel-like passage we passed, and suddenly into a room of startling magnificence!
Hung with green, silken, heavy-brocaded hangings, the walls writhed with the golden shape of a huge dragon worked in the silk, like a big nightmare swimming in green ink. It was a rich setting for the woman who rose from a couch as we entered. Her vivid, ripened beauty struck my senses. The half-nude, brown-skinned stalwarts, standing like statues at each side just back of her, told me she was somebody both from an erotic country, and vastly important — to have two bodyguards who could have made a good living as strong men in any show.
A stimulating wave of something, maybe woman-beauty, maybe something more subtle and sinister—a ray, perhaps—washed
