Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/200

170 me. As Iran I constantly besought Providence that they might stumble and fall, or give up the chase as hopeless.

Arrived within a hundred feet of 10th Avenue, I felt all my powers failing, and at every step expected to fall to the ground, perhaps dead, as I had some valvular disease of the heart. If I fell westward of 10th Avenue, where there would be no possibility of witnesses, I feared the ruffians would beat me to death in their anger at my causing them this hard chase. I hoped to hold out until I could throw myself on the mercy of pedestrians whom I expected to encounter on 10th Avenue, a street lined with a poor class of tenement houses. I reached that avenue and ran north half a block until I overtook a company of four smartly dressed young men. I now stopped running, walked along directly in front of them, and believed my pursuers would withdraw. But the latter seized me violently, and I appealed to the four spectators: "Won't you please keep these fellows from touching me? They are thieves, and were trying to beat and rob me."

"What's the matter? What's the matter? "

"Wait till I ki git my breath and I'll tell you."

"They are thieves and I was running away from them. They are blackmailers, that's all they are. A few days ago on Broadway they got some money out of me, and now are trying it again."

"He is a c I found him down on 26th Street wid this young feller."

"I didn't do anything of the kind to him. They are just trying to blackmail me."

"All they want is money. Just hand out four or five