Jacqueline of Golden River | Page 2

had been occupying, at a low rental, a tiny

apartment consisting of two rooms, a bath, and what is called a
"kitchenette" at the top of an old building in Tenth Street which was
about to be pulled down. Part of the roof was gone already, and there
was a six-foot hole under the eaves.
I had arranged to leave the next day, and a storage company was to call
in the morning for my few sticks of furniture. I had half planned to take
boat for Jamaica. I wanted to think and plan.
I had nobody dependent on me, and was resolved to invest my little
fortune in such a way that I might have a modest competence, so that
the dreadful spectre of poverty might never leer at me again.
The Eskimo dog was growing uneasy. It would run from me, looking
round and uttering a succession of short barks, then run back and tug at
my overcoat again. I began to become interested in its manoeuvres.
Evidently it wished me to accompany it, and I wondered who its master
was and how it came to be there.
I stooped and looked at the collar. There was no name on it, except the
maker's, scratched and illegible. I rose and followed the beast, which
showed its eager delight by running ahead of me, turning round at
times to bark, and then continuing on its way with a precision which
showed me that it was certain of its destination.
As I crossed Madison Square the light on the Metropolitan Tower
flashed the first quarter. Broadway was in full glare. The lure of electric
signs winked at me from every corner. The restaurants were disgorging
their patrons, and beautifully dressed women in fine furs, accompanied
by escorts in evening dress, stood on the pavements. Taxicabs whirled
through the slush.
I began to feel a renewal in me of the old, old thrill the city had
inspired when I entered it a younger and a more hopeful man.
The dog turned down a street in the Twenties, ran on a few yards,
bounded up a flight of stone steps, and began scratching at the door of a

house that was apparently empty.
I say apparently, because the shades were down at every window and
the interior was unlit, so far as could be seen from the street; but I knew
that at that hour it must contain from fifty to a hundred people.
This place I knew by reputation. It was Jim Daly's notorious but
decently conducted gambling establishment, which was running full
blast at a time when every other institution of this character had found
it convenient to shut down.
So the creature's master was inside Daly's, and it wished me to get him
out. This was evidence of unusual discernment in his best friend, but it
was hardly my prerogative to exercise moral supervision over this
adventurous explorer of a chillier country even than his northern wastes.
I looked in some disappointment at the closed doors and turned away.
I meant to go home, and I had proceeded about three paces when the
lock clicked. I stopped. The front door opened cautiously, and the gray
head of Jim's negro butler appeared. Behind it was the famous grille of
cast-steel, capable, according to rumour, of defying the axes of any
number of raiding reformers.
Then emerged one of the most beautiful women that I had ever seen.
I should have called her a girl, for she could not have been more than
twenty years of age. Her hair was of a fair brown, the features modelled
splendidly, the head poised upon a flawless throat that gleamed white
beneath a neckpiece of magnificent sable.
She carried a sable muff, too, and under these furs was a dress of
unstylish fashion and cut that contrasted curiously with them. I thought
that those loose sleeves had passed away before the nineteenth century
died. In one hand she carried a bag, into which she was stuffing a large
roll of bills.
As she stepped down to the street the dog leaped up at her. A hand fell
caressingly upon the creature's head, and I knew that she had one

servant who would be faithful unto death.
She passed so close to me that her dress brushed my overcoat, and for
an instant her eyes met mine. There was a look in them that startled
me--terror and helplessness, as though she had suffered some
benumbing shock which made her actions more automatic than
conscious.
This was no woman of the class that one might expect to find in Daly's.
There was innocence in the face and in the throat, uplifted, as one sees
it in young girls.
I was bewildered. What was a girl like that doing in