That night's work had not been considered by the firm to have yielded
more than a moderate repayal for their pains. An old-style two-story
side-bolt safe in the dingy office of a very wealthy old-style dry-goods
firm on a Saturday night should have excreted more than twenty-five
hundred dollars. But that was all they found, and they had divided
it, the three of them, into equal shares upon the spot, as was their
custom. Ten or twelve thousand was what they expected. But one of the
proprietors had proved to be just a trifle too old-style. Just after
dark he had carried home in a shirt box most of the funds on hand.

Doctor James proceeded up Twenty-fourth Street, which was, to all
appearance, depopulated. Even the theatrical folk, who affect this
district as a place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had
accumulated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the
fire of the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid
spangles. A captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the
laryngeal flues between the houses.

As the practitioner's foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick
residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped
open, and a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement.
Some medley of words came from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to
herself--the recourse of her race when alone and beset by evil. She
looked to be one of that old vassal class of the South--voluble,
familiar, loyal, irrepressible; her person pictured it--fat, neat,
aproned, kerchiefed.

This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bottom
of the steps as Doctor James came opposite. Her brain transferring