The Definite Object by Jeffery Farnol

It was past three o'clock and dawn was at hand as, by devious ways, Spike piloted his companion through that section of New York City which is known to the initiated as "Hell's Kitchen. " By dismal streets they went, past silent, squalid houses and tall tenements looming grim and ghostly in the faint light; crossing broad avenues very silent and deserted at this hour, on and on until, dark and vague and mysterious, the great river flowed before them only to be lost again as they plunged into a gloomy court where tall buildings rose on every hand, huge and very silent, teeming with life -- but life just now wrapped in that profound quietude of sleep which is so much akin to death. Into one of these tall tenement buildings, its ugliness rendered more ugly by the network of iron fire-escape ladders that writhed up the face of it, Spike led the way, first into a dark hallway and thence up many stairs that echoed to their light-treading feet -- on and up, past dimly lit landings where were doors each of which shut in its own little world, a world distinct and separate wherein youth and age, good and evil, joy and misery, lived and moved and had their being; behind these dingy panels were smiling hope and black despair, blooming health and pallid sickness, and all those sins and virtues that go to make up the sum total of humanity.

Something of all this was in Geoffrey Ravenslee's mind as he climbed the dingy, interminable stair behind Spike, who presently halted to get his wind and whisper: