"Yes; it wasn't anything. We're nearly there now; there's Woodlawn." She did not speak again for some time, and I began to wonder if I had again trodden upon trouble. I seemed fated to do so at every turn. But presently she broke in with a comfortable triviality. "Look here, why don't you smoke if you want to? I forgot all about it, but of course you may. I don't mind." I had not noticed it before, but the cigarette was exactly what I wanted. The bodily comfort balanced things again, and made me feel at home with the situation. We ran down Riverside Drive, the dark bulk of the city on our left, and on our right[Pg 100] the glimmering breadth of the Hudson, streaked with yellow gleams. Thence we crossed over and continued on down Fifth Avenue, between blank houses and unnatural lights, the occasional clack of hoofs and hollow growl of wheels accentuating the unwonted stillness. I had somehow taken it for granted that we were going for a doctor. But when we passed Madison Square and kept on south along Broadway, that errand became unlikely; and when we turned eastward over the rough cobbles of narrow side streets, I was in a state of blank wonder. We ran slowly, lurching and bumping, through interminable chasms of squalor where iron railings mounted to the doors and clots of bedding hung from open windows; where evil odors hung and drifted like clouds, and a sick heat lay prisoned between wall and pavement, and stragglers turned to stare after us as we went by. Now and then we crossed some wider thoroughfare with its noise of cars and tangle of sagging wires overhead, and signs in foreign tongues under the corner lights. And at last we came into a city of dreadful sleep, dim and deserted and still. The scattered lamps were only yellow splotches in the dusk, the stores were barred and bared, and there was no human thing in sight[Pg 101] save here and there a huddle of grimy clothes under the half shelter of a doorway. Puffs of salt air from the river troubled the stagnant mixture of fish, leather and stale beer. [Pg 100] [Pg 101] We stopped before a narrow doorway pinched sidewise between two shop windows like a fish's mouth. Lady leaned across me to scan the bleak windows above. "There should be a light on the top floor," she said, "yes, there it is. Ask Thomas to make sure of the number."
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