Inside the cab Ralston set his teeth.
"I'll make it a full quota!" he muttered.
They turned down Thirty-third Street into Fifth Avenue.
"Look here," said Sullivan suddenly, "all I do is to show him to you, see? Understand, I don't get into no mix-up myself! My job ends when I give you the pass."
"All right," said Ralston. "Just show him to me. That's all I ask."
"All right," repeated Sullivan.
They passed Forty-second Street and turned into Forty-fifth, just as the lights in the crosstown cars had been put out.
VIII
The house before which they stopped was an old-fashioned brownstone front. A brownstone flight of steps with a heavy brownstone balustrade and huge, carved newel post of the same depressing material led to a pair of ponderous stained doors tight shut with the air of finality possible only to a brownstone side street. The shades on the four rows of windows of this impenetrable mansion were smoothly drawn. At the grated window in the area the lower half of a bird cage, just visible beneath the screen, was the only indication of occupancy. The whole aspect of the place was that of somnolent respectability. One could imagine the door being swung wide, the rug shaken, the broom making a fictitious passage through the vestibule, the curtains going up unevenly in the front parlor, the shades raised in the area, the canary thrilling in response to the shaking of the kitchen range, and Paterfamilias coming down the steps at about eight twenty-five in a square Derby hat, to go to his real estate office. This is what occurs at four homes out of five in this locality every morning from the first day of October to the first day of July.