"I suppose that he wanted to pump me, at ease, under the guise of a homelike hospitality.

If there is any little game being played around me, I will now take a hand in it." As he moved to the door, the memory of that bewitching woman's face rose up once more to thrill the very core of his lonely heart.
"She looked lonely.

Perhaps she is, like myself, a solitary sail on Life's lonely ocean.

And I shall never see her again! Lost in New York's human flood.

But I'll buy that picture, if I live till Monday.
It will call her back to me; bring back her vanished loveliness." A motley crowd was pouring into the various doors of the huge hostelry, for the evening trains were depositing the flotsam and jetsam of humanity into busy Gotham.
Prosperous tourists, crafty schemers, brazen politicians, overdressed drummers, and flashy sporting men were pouring in to seek the "first aid to the weary," which the nearest available hotel affords to the cramped and jaded traveler.
Even the sidewalks were now thronged with anxious-eyed women, some of them with wildly-beating hearts, awaiting the kind "gentleman friend" who so often mysteriously appears at the cross-roads of Life.
From the Forty-second Street Station the "new departure" of many a life has begun, the radial lines often curving downward into the sheer depths of ruin of the Morgue, or the darkened abysses of the Tenderloin.
Alas! That no angel with a flaming sword stands ready to warn away the helpless from the gates which close behind the unwary with a deadly clang.
Randall Clayton drew back as a stalwart traveler jostled him, only to spring forward in the ardor of mutual recognition.
"Jack Witherspoon, by all the gods," cried the delighted New Yorker.