"That's the trouble," said the policeman. "You're doin' nothing now, but
you're likely to do something if you stay here. Beat it! You're in the
wrong street!" With an air of finality the policeman turned away.
Irresolutely the ex-convict retreated a few yards more, stepping out
into the roadway. Was he indeed in the wrong street? Was that why he
felt so uncomfortable? Yes, that must be it--he was in the wrong street!
Fifth Avenue was not for him any more, even though once he had lived on
Fifth Avenue.
As he shambled across to the opposite sidewalk he shoved his hand up
under his hat, which was too large for him, and scratched his head in
a new perplexity. And then to him, in a flash, came a solution of the
situation, and with it came inspiration and purpose. It was precisely
in that brief moment that Felix Looms, the well-known writer, died, he
having been killed instantaneously by the very thing after which he had
lusted.
The man who had been Felix Looms--Felix Looms, who was now dead--headed
eastward through a cross street. He hurried along, moving now with
decision and with more speed than he had shown in his loitering course
from the station. In turn he crossed Madison Avenue and Park Avenue and
Lexington Avenue, so that soon the district of big restaurants and clubs
and churches and hotels and apartment houses lay behind him and he had
arrived in a less pretentious and more crowded quarter. He reached Third
Avenue, with its small shops and its tenements, and the L structure
running down the middle of it; he crossed it and kept on.
Midway of the next block he came to a place where a building was in
course of construction. The ground floor was open to the street, for the
façade, which was to be a shop front, had not gone up yet. The slouching
pedestrian stopped and looked in searchingly. He saw scattered about
over a temporary flooring, which was laid roughly on the basement
rafters, a clutter of materials and supplies. He saw a line of gas pipes
and water pipes, which protruded their ends from beneath a pile of
sheathing, looking rather like the muzzles of a battery of gun barrels
of varied bores.
At sight of this piping the eyes of the passer-by narrowed earnestly.
Over his shoulders, this way and that, he glanced. There was no watchman
in sight. The workmen--all good union men, doubtless--had knocked off
for the day; but it was not yet dark and probably the night watchman had
not come on duty.
He looked again, and then he stepped inside the building.
In a minute or so he was out. He had one arm pressed closely against his
side as though to maintain the position of something he carried hidden
beneath his coat. Head down, he walked eastward. Between Third Avenue
and Second he found the place for which he sought--a small paved
passageway separating two tenements, its street end being stopped with
a wooden door-gate which swung unlocked. He entered the alley, slipping
into the space just behind the protecting shield of the gate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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