I was already thinking of the other figure, the equally mysterious and more appealing figure in black.
I swung round and strode on through the trees just in time to see that somber and white-faced young woman cross Madison Avenue, and pass westward between a granite-columned church and the towering obelisk of a more modern god of commerce. I kept my eyes on this street-end as it swallowed her up. Then I passed out through the square and under the clock-dial and into Twenty-fourth Street.
By the time I had reached Fourth Avenue I again caught sight of the black-clad figure. It was moving eastward on the south side of the street, as unhurried and impassive as a sleep-walker.
When half-way to Lexington Avenue I saw the woman stop, look slowly round, and then go slowly up the steps of a red-brick house. She did not ring, I could see, but let herself in with a pass-key. Once the door had closed on her, I sauntered toward this house. To go farther at such an hour was out of the question. But I made a careful note of the street number, and also of the fact that a slip of paper pasted on the sandstone door-post announced the fact of "Furnished Rooms."
I saw, not only that little was to be gained there, but also that I had faced my second disappointment. So I promptly swung back to Madison Square and the fountain where I had left the man in the velour hat. I ran my eye from bench to bench of sleepers, but he was not among them. I went over the park, walk by walk, but my search was unrewarded. Then I circled about into Broadway, widening my radius of inspection. I shuttled back and forth along the side-streets. I veered up and down the neighboring avenues. But it was useless. The man in the velour hat was gone.
Then, to my surprise, as I paced the midnight streets, a sense of physical weariness crept over me. I realized that I had walked for miles. I had forgotten my own troubles and that most kindly of all narcotics, utter fatigue, crept through me like a drug.
So I went home and went to bed. And for the first time that week I felt the Angel of Sleep stoop over me of her own free will. For the first time that week there was no need of the bitter lash of chloral hydrate to beat back the bloodhounds of wakefulness. I fell into a sound and unbroken slumber, and when I woke up, Benson was waiting to announce that my bath was ready.
Two hours later I was ringing the bell of a certain old-fashioned red-brick apartment-house in East Twenty-fourth Street. I knew little enough about such places, but this was one obviously uninviting, from the rusty hand-rail to the unwashed window draperies. Equally unprepossessing was the corpulent and dead-eyed landlady in her faded blue house-wrapper; and equally depressing did I find the slatternly and bared-armed servant who was delegated to lead me up through the musty-smelling halls. The third-floor front, I was informed, was the only room in the house empty, though its rear neighbor, which, was a bargain at two dollars and a half a week, was soon to be vacated.
I took the third-floor front, without so much as one searching look at its hidden beauties. The lady of the faded blue wrapper emitted her first spark of life as I handed over my four dollars. The listless eyes, I could see, were touched with regret at the thought that she had not asked for more. I tried to explain to her, as she exacted a deposit for my pass-key, that I was likely to be irregular in my hours and perhaps a bit peculiar in my habits.
These intimations, however, had no ponderable effect upon her. She first abashed me by stowing the money away in the depths of her open corsage, and then perplexed me by declaring that all she set out to do, since her legs went back on her, was to keep her first two floors decent. Above that, apparently, deportment could look after itself, the upper regions beyond her ken could be Olympian in their moral laxities.