ess man watched the taxicab until it had rounded the corner of
Marrow Lane. Then he looked upward at the stars for a while. Then he
swung slowly and wearily back into his rookery, and having extinguished
the light, sat for a long time in the dark.
What was it that had come over the man to let his victim escape when she
was so mercilessly in his power? Ask the stars to which he turned. Ask
the darkness in which he sits, alone, thinking. Better, perhaps, ask the
man's warped and tormented soul.
[Illustration: He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the
cab.... "Here I wishes you salutations ..."]
It seems that while he sat in his office waiting for her, a champion
rose up to defend her, a champion in his own heart. A champion who
made such headway against the brute's lawless and beastly intention as
to overthrow it.
Blizzard was in the power of that which all his mature life he had
feared more than hanging or the electric chair, more even than prisons.
He had fallen quietly, even gently, in love.
"I'm not going to ask you any questions," said Barbara, "because I don't
think of any. But if you like to talk, please do."
Without comment or preamble the youth who was to answer for her safety
with his ears, began to talk.
"Might have knocked me over with a feather," he said, "to find a lady
like you sitting in a cab in front o' Blizzard's place. At first look I
says to myself: 'One o' these high-fliers I've heard talk about that
likes to fly low.' Then I flings your eyes one penetrating peep, and
says to myself: ''Spect she ain't one o' that kind.' And I make out just
this about you that you're O.K. from A to Xylophone, and I takes this
opportunity to remark aloud to myself that I don't know what your game
is, and it's none o' my haterogeneous business, but if I was you I'd cut
Marrow Lane out o' my itenerary, and stay home nights playin' a quiet
rubber o' tiddle winks-the-barber."
Barbara laughed gayly. "Everybody," she said, "thinks that my friend,
Mr. Blizzard, is a very bad man. But he does nothing to prove it. He
has been very considerate of me in every way."
"Did I say anything against Blizzard? You'll tell him I did? Not you.
And I did not. If it _wasn't_ for him, I says, Marrow Lane _would_ be
hell's kitchen, and on the chanct that he ain't always going to be on
the spot, nor me, cut it out, I says. But," continued the talkative
youth, "in case you don't cut it out, in case you're ever in
|