Above him, on the stoop, the lady of the house appeared; paused to
peer searchingly east and west; looked down at the trembling figure of
the small man in his overgrown police tunic, shaking an impotent fist
in the face of the City of New York; and laughed quietly to herself.
"Come back," she called in a guarded tone. "He's made a clean getaway.
Got to hand him _that_. No use trying to follow--you'd never catch up
in a thousand years. Come back--d'you hear?--and give me my gun!"
A trifle dashed, P. Sybarite raked the street with final reluctant
glances; then in a spirit of witless and unquestioning docility
returned.
The woman retired to the vestibule, where she closed and locked the
door as he passed through, further ensuring security by means of a
chain-bolt; then entering the hallway, closed, locked, and similarly
bolted the inner doors.
"Now, then!" she addressed the little man with a brilliant smile--"now
we can pow-wow. Come into the den"--and led the way toward the rear of
the house.
Trotting submissively in her wake, his wrinkled nose and batting
eyelids were eloquent of the dumb amaze with which he was reviewing
this incredible affair.
Turning into a dark doorway, the woman switched light into an electric
dome, illuminating an interior apartment transformed, by a wildly
original taste in eccentric decoration, into a lounging room of such
distressful uniquity that it would have bred unrest in the soul of a
lotus-eater.
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