Cocky? Well, I should say I was. I was drunk enough with success to take big chances. And just while I was wishing for something really big to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big floor-walker!
He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once. But you've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden. I ran up the stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell. And as I sailed up in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker hurry past; he'd lost the scent.
The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had gone down I walked up to the roof. It was fine 'way up there, so still and high, with the lights coming out down in the town. And I took out my pretty lace collar and put it around my neck, wishing I could keep it and wishing that I had, at least, a glass to see myself in it just once, when my eye caught the window of the next house.
It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was down. But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all about the collar.
It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little rat of a lawyer had got me most to the wall. I looked at the window, measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to it,—the house next door was just one story higher than the one where I was, so its top story was on a level with the roof nearly where I stood. And I made up my—mind to get what would let Tom off easy, or break into jail myself.
And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that window. And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark hall, and not a thing stirred; not a footstep creaked. I felt like the Princess—Princess Nancy Olden—come to wake the Sleeping Beauty; some dude it'd be that would have curly hair like Tom Dorgan's, and would wear clothes like my friend Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.
Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to lie or to fly at the first sound?
Well, the first sound didn't come. Neither did the second. In fact, none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.
Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, I walked toward an open door. It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco, and with lots of papers and books around. And nary a he-beauty—nor any other kind.
I tried the door of a room next to it. A bedroom. But no Beauty.