these steps practically on the ground level, only of course you go down into a kind of areaway that's a step or maybe it might have been two steps below the pavement level but not more than that if I remember rightly, and there was a kind of iron grilled door, but, 's I said, there weren't any lights or anything that we could see, and I wondered if the taxi-driver could 've been right and—
But I rung the bell and pretty soon, sure enough, the door opened, and by golly there was a fellow in one of these funny Lord High Admiral uniforms, and I says to him, "Is this the Nouvelle Desire—" That was the name of the joint I was looking for—"Is this the Nouvelle Desire?" I says.
"Yes, but I haven't the pleasure of knowing your face," he says—you know, some highfalutin comeback like that.
Well, I kidded him along—I told him it wasn't such a hard face to know when you put your mind to it. Delmerine—she stood right back of me, and I must say, maybe it was just because she was my
