Presumably he saw nothing of interest to him. It was not a particularly interesting block, for that matter: though somewhat typical of the neighborhood. The north side was lined with five-story flat buildings, their dingy-red brick façades regularly broken by equally dingy brownstone stoops, as to the ground floor, by open windows as to those above. The south side was mostly taken up by a towering white apartment hotel with an ostentatious entrance; against one of whose polished stone pillars the short and thick-set man was lounging.
The sidewalks, north and south, swarmed with children of assorted ages, playing with that ferocious energy characteristic of the young of Harlem; their blood-curdling cries and premature Fourth-of-July fireworks created an appalling din: to which, however, the more mature denizens had apparently become callous, through long endurance.
Beyond the party-colored lights of a drug-store window on Seventh Avenue, the electric arcs were casting a sickly radiance upon the dusty leaves of the tree-lined drive. The avenue itself was crowded with motor-cars and horse-drawn pleasure vehicles, mostly bound up-town, their occupants seeking the cooler airs and wider spaces to be found beyond the Harlem River and along the Speedway. A few blocks to the west Cathedral Heights bulked like a great wall, wrapped in purple shadows, its jagged contour stark against an evening sky of suave old rose.
The short and thick-set body, however, seemed to have no particular appreciation of the beauties of nature as exhibited by West One-hundred and Eighteenth Street on a summer's evening. If anything, he could apparently have desired a cooling breeze; for, after a moment's doubtful consideration, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and heaved a sigh of relief.
Then, carefully shifting the butt of a dead cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, where it was almost hidden by the jutting thatch of his black mustache, and drawing down over his eyes the brim of a rusty plug hat, he thrust fat hands into the pockets of his shabby trousers and lounged against the polished pillar even more energetically than before: if that were possible. An unromantic, apathetic figure, fitting so naturally into his surroundings as to demand no second look even from the most observant; yet one seeming to possess a magnetic attraction for the eyes of the hall-boy of the apartment hotel (who, acquainted by sight and hearsay with the stout gentleman's identity and calling, bent upon him a steadfast and adoring regard), as well as for the policeman who lorded it on the St. Nicholas Avenue corner, in front of the real-estate office, and who from time to time shifted his contemplation from the infinite spaces of the heavens, the better to exchange a furtive nod with the idler in the hotel doorway.
Presently,—at no great lapse of time after the short and thick-set man had stowed away his watch,—out of the thronged sidewalks of Seventh Avenue a man appeared, walking west on the north side of the street and reviewing carelessly the numbers on the illuminated fanlights: a tall man, dressed all in grey, and swinging a thin walking stick.
The short, thick-set person assumed a mien of more intense abstraction than ever.
The tall man in grey paused indefinitely before the brownstone stoop of the house numbered 205, then swung up the steps and into the vestibule. Here he halted, bending over to scrutinize the names on the letter-boxes.
The short, thick-set man reluctantly detached himself from his polished pillar and waddled ungracefully across the street.
The policeman on the corner seemed suddenly interested in Seventh
Avenue; and walked in that direction.