jammed up against the wall, was a shed for lumber, so built that when you set the steps on its roof you could put your fingers on the top of the bricks above and haul yourself up. It didn't take Jim and I a minute to do this; and once astride the wall, we had our first view of the Maison d'Or.
I must say, and I always have said, that there was something uncanny in the very look of that house. Its heavy, blackened shape seemed to rise up like the shape of a dead-house or a prison. Many of its lower windows were heavily barred with iron bars. The paved yard around it was reeking with filth and rubbish. No sound, no light came out of it. It was just a great mass of brick-work looming up in the darkness, and I could understand easily enough how all the wild tales about it had come to be told. Sitting there, astride on the wall, and peering at such casements as faced the back of the cabaret, I should not have been a bit surprised if I'd have seen some inhuman thing stalking the yard below me. My heart was in my mouth—my nerves twitched like a woman's. And Jim was not a whit better.
"Do you make any thing of it?" he whispered, after we'd been on the wall a minute or two.
"The devil a bit!" said I.
"It ain't exactly a palace of varieties, is it?" he continued presently; "but Grey's in there, right enough. It was through that mite of a window on your left that I got a sight of the place last night. There was a light there then. I don't fancy we'll do much to-night."
