I recall one snowy January night when I was returning home. It was on a
Saturday, and I had played a five-act play twice with but a sandwich for
my dinner, the weather forbidding my going home after the matinee. So
being without change to ride with, hungry and unutterably weary, I
started, bag in hand, to walk up Sixth Avenue. On the east side stood a
certain club house (it stands there yet, by the way), whose peculiar
feature was a vine-hung veranda across its entire front, from which an
unusually long flight of steps led to the sidewalk. Quite unmolested, I
had walked from the stage door almost to this building, when suddenly,
as if he had sprung from the very earth, a man was at my elbow
addressing me, and the fact that he was not English, and so not
understood, did not in the slightest degree lessen the terror his evil
face inspired. I shrank away from him, and he caught at my wrist. It was
too much. I gave a cry and started to run, when, tall and broad, a man
appeared at the foot of the club-house steps, just ahead of me. Ashamed
to be seen running, I halted, and dropped into a walk again.

Then with that exaggerated straightening of back and stiffening of knee
adopted by one who tries to walk a floor-crack or chalk-line, the second
man approached me. He was very big, he was silvery grey, and his dignity
was portentous. At every step he struck the pavement a ringing blow with
a splendid malacca cane. Old-fashioned and gold-headed, it looked enough
like its owner to have been his twin brother. He lifted his high silk
hat, and with somewhat florid indignation inquired: "My c-hild, was that
in-nfamous cur annoying you shust now? A-a-h!" he broke off,
flourishing his cane over his head, "there y-you slink; I w-wish I had
hold of you." And I heard the running footsteps of No. 1 as he darted
away, across and down the avenue.

"An-and the police?" sarcastically resumed the big man, who wavered