Hezekiah seized him by the throat.
“What do you want?” cried the man in sudden terror. “Don’t ask me for work. I tell you I have no work to give.”
“I don’t want work,” said Hezekiah grimly. “I am a beggar.”
“Oh! is that all,” said the man, relieved. “Here, take this ten dollars and go and buy a drink with it.”
Money! money! and with it a new sense of power that rushed like an intoxicant to Hezekiah’s brain.
“Drink,” he muttered hoarsely, “yes, drink.”
The lights of a soda-water fountain struck his eye.
“Give me an egg phosphate,” he said as he dashed his money on the counter. He drank phosphate after phosphate till his brain reeled. Mad with the liquor, he staggered to and fro in the shop, weighed himself recklessly on the slot machine three or four times, tore out chewing gum and matches from the automatic nickel boxes, and finally staggered on to the street, reeling from the effects of thirteen phosphates and a sarsaparilla soda.
“Crime,” he hissed. “Crime, crime, that’s what I want.”
He noticed that the passers-by made way for him now with respect. On the corner of the street a policeman was standing.