I learned, during those days, the completer truth of what Jerry had told me of the underworld. It wasn’t a place; not at all. For the places, they all remained. There was the Flamingo Feather, dull and drab by daylight with its door beyond the bakery, the pawnshop, the soft-drink parlor; its light was out; its iron basket rusted and filled with wet, melting snow. At night “The Apollo Club”--giggling clerks--consorted there; and then “The Brothers of Byzas,” who, if he was like his kin, was a teamster, apparently. Gone, gone from the Flamingo Feather were my friends of the masque, vanished as wholly as yesterday’s snow from the basket over the door. Nor could Klangenberg’s help me. There was the door within which stood shelves heaped with delicatessen; but a strange child pondered over the keys of the cash register which invited “come again.” He knew nothing of Klangenberg who had “gone away.” Not even the “dyke-keeper” remained. Exploring the alley alone, I penetrated to the hooded stairs atop which Jerry had greeted me. Now an old wigged woman, crippled and fluent of Yiddish, kept vigil there. I sought Leventhal, the lessor of my Erasmus garb cast off in that shed and never recovered. I came offering cash to pay for the robe. He took the money, shaking his head; he would remember neither the robe nor me. There was no tracing, through him, of others who wore his clothes that night. They were vanished like Villon’s lovers: Alas for lovers! Pair by pair The wind has blown them all away; The young and yare, the fond and fair, Where are the Snows of Yesterday? Young and yare; that was Cleopatra! Where was she? Who was she? More than who, whose might she be? Well, what good for me to wonder and worry? What good to feel, by remembrance, the softness of her hand in mine when we danced; and then the iron warning of her fingers on my wrist! What good to see in mind the beauty of her shoulder and the smallness of her foot. They were gone, all gone; and, if I looked at the whole business sensibly, I would see that somehow, in ways not yet entirely clear, I had been of service in the game of getting for Christina and her man insurance of five hundred thousand with which they had got away; or he had, after taking it from her. XII I DISCOVER “THE QUEER.” Then Tom Downs was getting married and he asked me to usher, so there I was in Caldon’s, picking out an after-dinner coffee set to be sent to the bride; and a lot I knew about breeds and varieties of Hepplewhite and Colonial and Queen Anne. Now if setter dogs could only be wedding presents, or beans, I’d be right on the spot; or a bag of Rio coffee would be all right; but the coffee container never meant anything to me. So I was about to judge by the good old way, which has proved such a help to the high cost of living, and order the most expensive when I heard a voice that I knew and turned about.