BOOKS BY BASIL KING GOING WEST THE CITY OF COMRADES ABRAHAM’S BOSOM THE LIFTED VEIL THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT THE WAY HOME THE WILD OLIVE THE INNER SHRINE THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY THE STEPS OF HONOR THE HIGH HEART HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1817 [Illustration: “’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. “Don’t make a noise or you’ll frighten my friend. She’s nervous already.” (See p. 32)] _The_ CITY OF COMRADES BY BASIL KING _Author of_ “THE INNER SHRINE” “THE WILD OLIVE” “THE WAY HOME” “THE HIGH HEART” ETC. _I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;_ _I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;_ _Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest;_ _It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,_ _And in all their looks and words._ —WALT WHITMAN. [Illustration] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America ILLUSTRATIONS _“’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. “Don’t make a noise or you’ll frighten my friend. She’s nervous already.”_ _Frontispiece_ _“Didn’t you ever see any one put these pearls into his pocket before?”_ _Facing p. 204_ _“You’re going home to marry me.”_ _“How can I be going home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour that you—that you cared anything about me?”_ ” _290_ _“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived before the war—”_ ” _344_ THE CITY OF COMRADES _CHAPTER I_ “No.” “No?” “No.” In the slow swirl of Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of Central Park, two seedy, sinister individuals could hold an exceedingly private conversation without drawing attention to themselves. There were others like us on the scene, in that month of June, 1913, cast up from the obscurest depths of New York. We could revolve there for five or ten minutes, in company with other elements of the city’s life, to be eliminated by degrees, sucked into other currents, forming new combinations or reacting to the old ones.