Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/91



T this time of night, the street was as quiet as a creek ran dry,—with nothing to recall the day's turbulent flow of traffic except its empty channel of paving-stones worn smooth. Over the black walls of the warehouses, a moon hung like the frosted globe of an arclight in the slope of a high sky. A parade of street-lamps, marching down the deserted sidewalks, had halted along the gutter-edge; and under the light of one of these lamps, Patrolman Feeny was planted foursquare on the comer bend of the curb, straddling his shadow, with his head down.

He had recently been transferred to this precinct from a station-house in Harlem, because he had refused to buy the privilege of remaining conveniently near his home. Still more recently he had been called before the Deputy Commissioner on a baseless charge of being off post, and he had been fined two weeks' pay. Finally, he had just been warned that he would continue to be so transferred, fined, and generally persecuted until he gave up the twenty-five dollars that was required of him. And he was glowering at the gutter here, his chest tight with a suppressed wrath, ready for all impossible revolts.