narrow street lined with dingy cottages, and turned a corner. It was years since he had come this way, and then he had had a guide; but he had not forgotten a detail of the street. He went on without hesitation and knocked at the door of a small cottage, newly painted red. There was a long silence, then a stir, and the door opened. Tom Ryan faced him, Tom Ryan, the friend of his boyhood, with whom he had eaten shortly before his last arrest, the hod-carrier whose security, then, he had envied.
Tom Ryan’s face was very white, and his face was no welcome. He stood at the door and stared with eyes that showed fear, at the man he had known in boyhood. Suddenly a gulp came in his throat. “Good God,” he said, “you’re not John Collins, John, are you? You’re not John Collins, are you, John? Oh, my God!”
Collins caught the look, the fear, the shocked surprise. “Yes, it’s me,” he said, anger flaming through him. “What sort of a hand-out is this you’re giving me? Do I get in?”
And roughly he pushed within. The door
