“Is there anybody here who can speak American?” I demanded, as I came to a halt about two feet within the door.
Pandemonium! My entrance had not been noticed. At the sound of my voice it seemed to me that every man in the cellar sprang to his feet. Several chairs were overturned, and at least one table. In that moment I understood why Italians are called guineas. Those men sounded for all the world like a flock of guinea-hens when threatened by a hawk.
They swarmed about me gesticulating and potter-racking. It was so much like a scene in an Italian opera that I forgot to be afraid and became cross with them for appearing so stagy.
“Now, don’t try to start any monkey black-hand business,” I warned them crossly. “This is New York, and I’m in a hurry. Your dog’s been complained about, and I’ve got to see its license.”
“Oh, dog!” a voice at my elbow exclaimed, and there stepped from behind a curtain that I had not noticed a person whom I still believe to be the handsomest woman I have ever laid eyes on.
In that underground half-light she was superb. Nearly if not fully six feet tall, her figure reminded me of a perfectly proportioned pine sapling—as graceful and as natural. Her dress was of some black-gray filmy stuff that, falling in soft straight folds, accentuated her height and blended with the duskiness surrounding her. Her face was a long oval, her slumbrous eyes were as soft as black velvet, her nose slightly Roman, and her lips a delicately chiselled cupid’s bow.
She ordered the men to stand back, and with a wave of her hand signalled to them to right the overturned table and chairs. Then drawing aside the dark curtain from behind which she had made her sudden appearance, she called the dog. It came bounding out, a great black beast, its head almost on a level with my shoulders.
It was then I noticed for the first time that I possessed an unusual attraction for dogs. This ferocious-looking animal, in spite of the orders of its mistress, insisted on sniffing me over. This ceremony finished, to the surprise of the woman and the men looking on, the dog rubbed against me and tried to lick my hand.
When I took my seat at a near-by table—the woman urged me to have a glass of wine with her—the dog stretched itself out beside me and rested its head on my knees.
“You must be good to dogs,” the most beautiful woman in New York City told me, speaking with a soft lisping accent, after she had tried in vain to coax the dog to return to its bed behind the curtain. “I never saw Dante do like that with a stranger.”