supper he went to the home of his employer. Mrs. Dolan was ready to sell; the transfer could be made on the morrow. This news delighted William. But he did not tell Burns about his visit to Cook's. He thought it wiser to say nothing until after the transfer was drawn up and signed. Somewhere around eleven he started for home afoot. His boarding-house was only a mile away, and walking was always good on summer nights.
Along his route on one of the streets which cut Broadway, there was a restaurant famed for its quiet and remoteness from the town's glitter. William knew something about it. He had passed it dozens of times. Other men's wives and other wives' husbands patronized this restaurant, so it was said.
William was perhaps within ten feet of the restaurant when he paused. Through the painted screened windows came the strange surging melodies of a Magyar rhapsody. William loved music; even the thin pinkapank of the hurdy-gurdies held charm for him. As he listened to this wild gipsy music it seemed as though his senses had been gathered up and swept into the gipsy hills themselves, through the forests on the forewings of a storm, to be caught by the tempest itself and swirled, buffeted, smothered, finally to be let down gently into the succeeding calm; all as elusive as the shadows which tumble over the pebbled floor of a brook.
"Gee! but that was great!" he murmured, leaning against the lamp-post. He hoped there might be more of it.
Suddenly the upper door opened and a young woman came hurriedly down the steps. The moment she reached the sidewalk she started off at a brisk run. Her hat obscured her features. William got a whiff of lavender as she whisked by. Had hubby turned up? he wondered, cynically.
As a rule William always walked on. He never meddled with an affair he knew nothing about, being a New-Yorker. To-night, however, he was in a mischievous mood. He'd see what the game was.
A man in evening dress came out, looked east and west, and ran down to the sidewalk. He did not pursue the young woman, for the very reason that William stood in his way.
"Nothing doing, bo," he said, quietly. "When a young lady hits into the bleachers like that, she's off for the home-plate."
"Who the devil are you? Get out of my way."
"Beat it. I don't like your accent. Handsome-Is."
"Will you stand aside? Or, is this a hold-up?"
"Ye-ah, it's a kind of a hold-up. But what are you doing off your beat? What's the matter with old Forty-second Street stuff? Ain't they young enough?"
"Why, damn your impudence. … "
"Sir Hurlbert, unsay them cruel woids." Suddenly the banter left William's voice. "Listen to me. That young girl was running away from you; I don't need any inside information to get that. It's a hunch. Now, there's just two things on the card. Either you sashay back to your bucket of suds or you take the flat of my lily-white on your kazoozle. Are you wise?"
Had the stranger spoken gruffly that the young woman under discussion was his wife, William would have side-stepped the issue and gone on. But the hesitance, the indecision, were enough to convince William that this was an old story.
"Well, bo?"
The man shrugged, turned abruptly, and re-entered the restaurant.
"A good hunch," said William, eying the door speculatively. "Well, Bill, let's waltz."
And waltz he did. Not that he was afraid, but these upper Broadway swells had a way of convincing the police that the hoi polloi (which included William) were eternally in the wrong, no matter what the argument might be, and he appreciated the weakness of his case. The girl had disappeared, and it was up to him to follow her example.
His "Haw-haw!" suddenly broke the silence in the deserted street. A seven-dollar meerschaum and a trip around the world!
"And ten pink nails, Isobel! The luck of the Irish."
CHAPTER III
AFTER a few blocks he let down his stride to an amble and began his favorite pastime—building castles. And always there was a garden, a wife, and a couple of kids. For why should he build castles but for these? He looked up at the spangled canopy of the night. He saw two little brown shoes step lightly from star to star, one-two-three, and they were gone. His school-teacher; there was the girl for you; no nonsense about her, always on the job. Where did she go on her vacations? And what had really restrained him from going up into the street just once for a peek at her? Perhaps it was the fear that his fatal beauty would have blasted her where she stood. Oh, well; perhaps the Lord had made the majority of human beings homely so that some real work could be done. Handsome-Is was always crawling under the job, watching the clock, and beating it five minutes before closing hour.
His thought veered suddenly into another channel. The picture of the young woman in flight returned.
Poor, silly little butterflies, didn't they have any sense? Wasn't there anybody to look after them and warn them of the pitfalls? Or were most of them alone in the world? William cogitated seriously. He was tolerably familiar with the street scenes at night. He knew the breed, too, of the man with whom he had just clashed. Fine manners, sympathy, patience, money, and good looks, and hearts as black as ink-pots; and the silly little fools thought they saw the golden knight. Most of these children came in from the country and the small cities, to become great actresses, musicians, painters. William wondered how many of them were able to live at all. It always seemed that when they were loneliest, old Cow-Hoof came around the corner to cheer them up.
"And they fall for guys like that," he murmured. He couldn't understand. "They wouldn't look at me through a telescope, not if I had diamonds on both hands. It's looks, that's what gets 'em; looks, soft-soap. They run into every kind of danger with blinders on. They ain't any of 'em bad, just curious and lonesome. Aw, hell!"
William never dwelt long upon any subject, especially if it were distasteful. He began to chuckle. Perhaps this was the fatal hour, according to that clairvoyant. A few nights since he and some of the engine-house boys off duty had paid a visit to a near-by clairvoyant for the lark of it. The signs of his horoscope had been portentous (at fifty cents); there would be some money (they never said how much, being conservative), and the influence of the planets Venus and Mars would soon be felt. Well, he had the money all right; he was now ready for both Venus and Mars. Mars was all right; he had been born under that planet, no doubt, been scrapping as far back as he could remember. Any clairvoyant with a true eye for business could get away with that line of talk after one glance at his topknot. But this Venus stuff was to laugh; pure bunk. And, my, my! the poor simps who went to clairvoyants and believed in 'em. Ye-ah!
As he entered his room, murmuring something about "the new-mown hay for his," he sniffed the boiled cabbage. He smacked his lips over the recollection of his dinner. Nobody could cook corned beef and cabbage like Ma Hanlon.
I've often wondered if Bayard, or Quixote, or Roland ate New England dinners on Thursdays. William generally did.
At four o'clock the following afternoon William Grogan signed his name to certain documents and thereupon became a legal member of the firm of Burns, Dolan & Co.
"And now, partner, what's on the program?"
