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 self; and I kept to myself that I'd danced at the Flamingo Feather that night of "the thieves' ball," which was raided. The newspapers, always keen for the colorful, played up the pictures they took of those twenty girls and sixteen "crooks" in costume; but the papers did not even know of that dagger dance. Much less could they give news of the final consequence of it.

In my mind, when I thought of it, Keeban had caught Christina. In my mind, he had her somewhere wholly in his power; at his own time, in his own manner, he would punish her. Imagining this, I would get up and walk about; I felt I had to do something. But where were they? Where was Jerry? If he were not the Raleigh who had returned; if he were not the man who had danced, where had he gone? What had happendhappened [sic] to him?

I learned, during those days, the completer truth of what Jerry had told me of the underworld. It wasn't a place; not at all. For the places, they all remained. There was the Flamingo Feather, dull and drab by daylight with its door beyond the bakery, the pawnshop, the soft-drink parlor; its light was out; its iron basket rusted and filled with wet, melting snow.