Her finger crossed the street and put a square on the other side, and her face turned up to mine, begging me to understand her.
“The house across the street from the grocer’s,” I said slowly, and then, as she tapped my watch-pocket, I added, “at midnight tomorrow.”
I don’t know how much of it she caught, but she nodded her little head until her earrings were swinging like crazy pendulums.
With a quick diving motion, she caught my right hand, kissed it, and with a tottering, hoppy run vanished behind the velvet curtains.
I used my handkerchief to wipe the map off the table and was smoking in my chair when Chang Li Ching returned some twenty minutes later.
I left shortly after that, as soon as we had traded a few dizzy compliments. The pockmarked man ushered me out.
At the office there was nothing new for me. Foley hadn’t been able to shadow The Whistler the night before.
I went home for the sleep I had not got last night.