Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/167

 spite of the late hour, he walked north until he touched Eighteenth Street.

Soon he was home. Ascending to his floor, he took out his key and prepared to open the door. To his amazement, he found a key already in the lock. Oliver? But Oliver did not stay here nights. Thieves, assuredly, would never leave a key in the door. Still, for a second or two he hesitated, pondering as to whether he should go back for Pedro, the hall-boy. Then he turned the key and entered.

The apartment was perfectly dark. He pressed a button which illuminated the living-room. Nobody there. Passing into the bedroom he pressed another button. His eye fell first on a chair on which was heaped a congeries of feminine apparel. Then he turned to his bed. Curled up, quite uncovered in the heat, sound asleep, in much the same attitude that he had seen her assume with Bunny, lay Zimbule.

Harold stared at her for a moment. Then, his heart beating violently with rage and fear, he pressed the button extinguishing the light. He tiptoed to the hall, pressed the other button, and passed out, closing the door softly behind him.

As he descended in the elevator, Pedro blinked and eyed him curiously, and as Harold rushed out the front entrance, slamming the door violently, the boy whistled softly to himself. Then, with a smile, Pedro lit a cigarette and, like Madama Butterfly, sat down to wait for the dawn.