The Argosy for May — page 84: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HER IDEAL IN whose looks I admired, who would al- ways be utterly a stranger to me because convention labeled him, “not properly introduced.” : I liked the way he sat, the way he held his head, the way he had looked at me twice, without staring. Yet he was simply a figure glimpsed in the passing show about me; I should never see him again after I left the car at the next corner. Which, of course, didn’t matter, for I am not “ wooshy,’”’ as Grace defines the sentimental woman’s state of being. I would continue to exist quite happily despite the fact that I never knew the handsome stranger. Only—lI did wish we could have met ; I wanted to find out if he were really as nice to talk to as he was nice to Took at. As I signaled the conductor to stop at the next crossing, snuggling closer the portfolio of sketches I carried under my arm, I shouldn’t again have noticed the man as I rose—if he hadn’t walked down the aisle before me, and descended from the car at the same corner. By a coincidence he was getting off at my street. I watched him reach the side- walk ahead of me, from whence he might depart in any one of three directions— up or down the avenue, or along the street down which I was to go. Unhesitatingly, he took the latter course. Following, I momentarily ex- pected him to disappear into some one of the shops or office-buildings along the way. But he kept right straight ahead, his more vigorous pace separating us by fully a quarter of a block, yet his grace- ful figure still plainly in view. I had just asked myself where he was going, for the fifth time in two minutes, when I started forward with an excla- mation of surprise. The man had turned into the entrance of the very building for which I was headed. I saw his familiar gray over- coat vanish into the hallway of the tall, sandstone-fronted edifice where Grace and I had our top-floor abode. There was nothing unusual in the fact that he had gone in there; the building held a score of studios and apartments, at any one of which he might be calling. Yet the coincidence of his leaving the car at the same time I did struck me as THE. GRAY OVERCOAT. ITE a little odd, since his final destination was the same as mine. [I hurried after him. As I entered the hall the clang of a closing elevator-door greeted my ears. I was too late for more than a fleeting sight of well-known gray, glimpsed through the grille-work of the cage which rose with him out of my sight. He was gone. As I waited for the second of the two elevators our building boasts, I told myself that I had seen the last of Mr. Gray Overcoat—and I only sighed once. Stepping out at my. floor, I searched for my keys, which so persistently eluded me in some crevice of my bag that my eyes and hands were busily hunting them as I turned down the hall. Then, the little bunch lightly jingling in my hand, I lifted my eyes and looked toward my workshop-home. And _ the sight that there met my astonished gaze brought me up sharply with a gasp of amazement. The man who had preceded me from the street-car, up the street, and into this very building, was now entering the door of my apartments! There was no doubt about it. Before my very eyes his unmistakable figure stepped across the threshold. I saw and heard the door close after his easily recognizable gray overcoat. I felt the strength running like the fairy-tale gunpowder out at my knees, as the horrifying thought flashed like a white-light of truth into my brain. He was a burglar. My portfolio, and with it my bag, slipped, unheeded, to the floor after the keys, which dropped from my nerveless fingers. I leaned weakly against the wall, my trembling limbs jarring into being a million goose-pimples of fright on my body. The rooms that Grace and I occupied were at the mercy of the man I had seen entering our apartments as coolly and calmly as though they were his own, to plunder as he would. My chum had gone out that morning to visit a dozen music-pupils. I did not expect her back until long after I had returned from the office of the art editor of a down-town magazine, upon whom I had called that afternoon. What was I to do? How was this S (C@ MICLOOO