“Well, then, God's help go with ye!”
Into the shadows again—past long rows of silent warehouses, with here and there a flickering gas-lamp—until he reached Dover Street. He had still some work to do up-town, and Dover Street would furnish a short cut along the abutment of the great bridge, and so on to the Elevated at Franklin Square.
He was evidently familiar with its narrow, uneven sidewalk, for he swung without hesitation into the gloom and, with hands hooked behind his back, his stick held, as was his custom, close to his armpit, made his way past its shambling hovels and warehouses. Now and then he would pause, following with his eyes the curve of the great steel highway, carried on the stone shoulders of successive arches, the sweep of its lines marked by a procession of lights, its outstretched, interlocked palms gripped close. The memory of certain streets in London came to him—those near its own great bridges, especially the city dump at Black-friars and the begrimed buildings hugging the stone knees of London Bridge, choking up the snakelike alleys and byways leading to the Embankment.
Crossing under the Elevated, he continued along the side of the giant piers and wheeled into a dirt-choked, ill-smelling street, its distant outlet a blaze of electric lights. It was now the dead hour of the twenty-four—the hour before the despatch of the millions of journals, damp from the presses. He was the only human being in sight.
Suddenly, when within a hundred feet of the end of the street, a figure detached itself from a deserted doorway. Felix caught his stick from under his armpit as the man held out a hand.
“Say, I want you to give me the price of a meal.”
Felix tightened his hold on the stick. The words had conveyed a threat.
“This is no place for you to beg. Step out where people can see you.”
“I'm hungry, mister.” He had now taken in the width of O'Day's shoulders and the length of his forearm. He had also seen the stick.
Felix stepped back one pace and slipped his hand down the blackthorn. “Move on, I tell you, where I can look you over—quick!—I mean it.”