hs took that house away from Hill's spinster daughter.
Meller walked from the sidewalk to the great flags leading up to the door of the palace. He stared with swelling approval of himself at the ponderous iron grillework of the front door. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, eh? Well, he'd shown Hill and all his crew.
There was a thrill in finding the key to the house on his fat-ring. "I don't know that you'll want to bother looking in the old mausoleum," the agent had said, giving him the key, "as long as it is to be torn down so soon anyway."
But he had wanted to look through it. In a week, men would be here to dismantle the house, which had become a positive liability through the years, a worthless lump of stone and splendor on an invaluable site. A hotel corporation had bought the place for that site. The Hill home was only in the way.
He inserted the key in the massive lock. Imported from Italy, the iron grillework of the door had been. Old Hill had spread himself on his house.
"Much good it did him!" Meller spat viciously as he worked with the key.
Meller always saw red when he thought of the grim, hard old man. A blatant pusher, a cheap gambler, Hill had called Meller. The old man had refused steadily to have anything to do with the ruthless young fellow who was springing so far and so swiftly from the slums. "Damned young slug," the old man had said once—to his face. And Meller had never forgotten nor forgiven.
THE door suddenly opened as he was fiddling with the key. An old man, at least seventy, dressed in a plain blue serge suit faced him in the doorway.
Meller was startled for a moment. Then he remembered that the old Hill butler had volunteered to stay on as caretaker till the place was torn down—for nothing. The old fool!
"Yes, sir?" the butler quavered, inquiringly.
"I'm Meller."
The announcement made nо impression.
"The man who owns this house now," Meller said impatiently.
"Oh! Oh, yes, sir. And you want to look around?"
Meller nodded and pushed his way in. He was shorter than the old servant; a short fat man who, even at forty-one, puffed a little as he walked and perspired freely from a fat, rather apoplectic-looking countenance.
"Shall I direct you, sir?" said the butler.
"No." Meller clipped it out hardily. "Get out of here. I can find my own way around, I guess."
"Very good, sir. There is the elevator."
He pointed with a gnarled old hand to an automatic cage at the rear of the front hall. And Meller almost snarled as he gazed at that. An elevator in a private home! In the home he'd been raised in there hadn't even been a bathroom or electricity.
"All right," he said, more to himself than to the servant. He walked toward the elevator, meanwhile looking at the hall of this home in which he would once have been treated as dirt but which was now his—at least till the hotel people tore it down.
He tapped irritably at the floor with his cane. The wood was as ornate, as beautifully inlaid as a table-top. It woke savage hate in him. The ferrule of his stick was of metal and scuffed to a sharp rim around the edge. He dug deep with the ferrule and then dragged the cane after him.
A great raw scratch resulted in the softly polished, lovely wood. Behind him, Meller heard the old servant gasp as though he had been struck.
"What the hell?” said Meller harshly. "The joint's coming down soon anyway."
He made more scratches, as if he had his stick in the face of old Hill himself. He spelled his name in raw tears in the inlaid wood, laughing as he did so. Then he went on to the elevator.
An elevator in a private house! It still annoyed him, particularly such a little jewel-case as this mahogany and rosewood cage that bore him silently up toward the second floor at a touch of his finger.
THERE was gilt inlay in the panels. He amused himself by scratching some of it out with his stick on the way up. Then
