A
fife and drum came up the road.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
High over the water a light had come out--Liberty's high-flung torch.
Watching it, and quickened by the fife and drum to an erect sitting
posture, Mrs. Ross slid forward on her bench, lips opening. The policeman
standing off, rapped twice, and when she rose, almost running toward the
lights of the Elevated station, followed.
Within her apartment on upper Broadway, not even a hall light burned
when she let herself in with her key. At the remote end of the aisle of
blackness a slit of yellow showed beneath the door, behind it the babble of
servants' voices.
She entered with a stealth that was well under cover of those voices,
groping into the first door at her right, feeling round for the wall key,
switching the old rose-and-gold room into immediate light. Stood for a
moment, her plumage drooping damply to her shoulders, blue foulard dress
snagged in two places, her gold mesh bag with the sapphire-and-diamond top
hanging low from the crook of her little finger. A clock ticked with almost
an echo into the rather vast silence.
She entered finally, sidling in among the chairs.
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