He was not hailed. Leaning his elbows on the mahogany rail, and embracing the little whiskey glass within one hand, preparatory to kissing it, he gazed with pleasure at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. A thoughtless pleasure, and cumulative; for it made him exult the more, to see himself exulting. Likeness of a fellow with a dandy appetite! The fine creases on either side of his mouth deepened. He observed that the snowy muffler set off his pink skin and jetty black hair with striking effectiveness.
Swallowing his whiskey, he went out again, and turned west in Thirty-fourth street. This neighborhood had lately taken on a nondescript character. The building of the Pennsylvania terminal had brought business among the sedate old dwelling-houses, and some of them were now let out in rooms to all comers. The landlords collected their rents in advance, and shrugged their shoulders: the tenants looked after themselves. Joe had considered all this before hiring a room there.
With a final glance around, to assure himself he had not been recognized, Joe turned into one of the old houses, and mounting to a hall room on an upper floor, let himself in. It had been a family bedroom once; the old-fashioned wall-paper was rubbed and discolored; the grate was full of litter; the floor smelled of dust. There was nothing in the room now but some old clothes hanging from a row of hooks on the back of the door, and a new kitchen chair. Without troubling to make a light, Joe, whistling between his teeth, commenced to take off his fine clothes replacing them with the shabby garments from the back of the door. The chair was to enable him to change his shoes in comfort. He spread a newspaper to protect his stockinged feet from the dusty floor.
In due course he issued out of the house, metamorphosed. He was now wearing a greasy mackintosh with the collar turned up around his neck, and a shapeless cap pulled down over his eyes. He had sloughed off more than the fine clothes; somehow he looked ten years younger, and fifteen pounds lighter. His glance seemed to have become narrower and more penetrating, his nose longer, his cheeks hollower, his mouth more cruel. His gait had become a loose-limbed slouch, full of a latent spring. He gave the effect of a young wolf at his ease, with his tongue lolling. He padded noiselessly along the pavement at an uneven rate, like an idle wolf; sometimes a lighted shop window drew him to stand and gaze with vacant, brilliant eyes.
In another saloon he bought a bottle of whiskey, and carried it away under the mackintosh. At Herald Square he hailed a taxicab, and had himself driven down-town to the corner of Rivington street and the Bowery. He walked east in Rivington street, his steps unconsciously quickening, and becoming purposeful. He loitered no more. Turning into one of the older tenement houses, the springs in his body seemed suddenly to be released. Running up the stairs two at a time, he rapped at a door on the first landing.
There was no answer; and with a black face, he rapped again.
From within, a woman’s voice answered coolly: “You can’t come in.”
Joe looked like a balked wolf then. “It’s me,” he muttered.
“I can’t help it. You’ll have to come back in ten minutes.”
He slunk back and forth before the door, showing his teeth, and impotently glaring at the panels. Then he went noisily down the stairs. Outside, he kept shifting uneasily around the low stoop with his wolflike tread, keeping his glance fixed on the entrance with a snarl fixed in his face; yet half afraid; for suddenly he veered off across the roadway, with his head over his shoulder. He entered a lunch-room opposite, and ordering a cup of coffee, brought it back to the window where he could still watch the entrance to the tenement house. Presently a man came out. Joe had never seen the man, but by his furtive air he knew it was the man he was waiting for. Joe, drawing behind the window frame, watched him, snarling, and profoundly indifferent. Leaving the coffee, he went back across the street.