He’d find her alimony attractive, anyway, she guessed. Ed hadn’t been very successful in his various business ventures. But say—look here, there wouldn’t be any alimony, would there, if she married again? Hadn’t there been some such clause? She had never given it much thought because she had been so dead sure she was never going to marry again. Gracious, she hadn’t thought of that. Well, never mind, she could contribute something in the way of funds. She had a savings-bank account amounting to over a thousand dollars. That wasn’t to be sneezed at. Last time she had seen Ed, it looked to her as if he hadn’t a bank account amounting to anything.

“I’m sort of out of luck this year,” he’d told her apologetically. (The lining of his overcoat had been frayed and ragged around the cuffs. He had caught her looking at it.) “But I can still give you a good time, little girl, just the same. See?” He had opened his overcoat. She had caught a glimpse of a bottle shining. He had patted it tenderly. “More where this comes from, too,” he had winked, “but say, it’s awful expensive stuff now. Awful! Dearer’n a woman! Prohibition has played the devil and all with my capital, Stella.” No. Ed might not scorn her little nest-egg.

She became more and more convinced he might not as she approached the vicinity of the address on the card. She had never been down this way before. Why, it was slums—regular slums! North Blank Street was a narrow, roughly cobbled sort of alley. There was a row of low brick houses on each side, dilapidated and out of repair. There was a dark damp look to the alley and a dark damp smell, too, that reminded Stella of underground cellar stairs. Unlike most of the other doorways in North Blank Street, 172 still had all three of its digits clinging to the battered front paint. Stella, standing on the narrow sidewalk, reached up over the two front steps and knocked loudly just below the number. She knocked three times, then receiving no answer, turned the loose knob and walked in.

“Anybody here?” she called up the rickety stairway.

“What yer want?” A young woman of about twenty, with a mop of black bushy hair, cut short, stuck her head out of a door at the rear of the hall.

Stella told her.

“What do you want of him?” the young woman demanded eyeing Stella with interest.

“I want to see him on business.”

“Ma,” called the woman in a powerful voice. “Here’s a lady wants to see Munn on business.”

“Ma” came to have a look at Stella, too. Both mother and daughter stared at Stella with hard suspicious eyes. It didn’t make Stella flush. She didn’t blame them. It did look funny.

“He ain’t here any more,” Ma crisply told Stella.