FullReads

There were wreaths to-night in the club windows, and when Sands opened the doors there was a mass of poinsettia against the hall mirror.

How warm it looked with all that gold and red!

In the basement was the grill. It was a night when one might order something heavy and hot. A planked steak–with deviled oysters at the start and a salad at the end.

And now another motor-car was poking its nose against the curb. And Whiting climbed out, a bear in a big fur coat.

Whiting’s car was a closed one. And it would stay there for an hour. Ostrander knew the habits of the man. From the office to the club, and from the club–home. Whiting was methodical to a minute. At seven sharp the doors would open and let him out.

The clock on the post-office tower showed six!

There was a policeman on the east corner, beating his arms against the cold. Ostrander did not beat his arms. He cowered frozenly in the shadow of a big building until the policeman passed on.

Then he darted across the street and into Whiting’s car!

Whiting, coming out in forty minutes, found his car gone. Sands, the door man, said that he had noticed nothing. The policeman on the corner had not noticed.

“I usually stay longer,” Whiting said, “but to-night I wanted to get home. I have a lot of things for the kids.”

“Were the things in your car?” the policeman asked.

“Yes. Toys and all that–“

Ostrander, with his hand on the wheel, his feet on the brakes, slipped through the crowded streets unchallenged. It had been easy to unlock the car. He had learned many things in these later years.

It was several minutes before he was aware of faint fragrances–warm tropical fragrances of flowers and fruits and spices–Christmas fragrances which sent him back to the great kitchen where his grandmother’s servants had baked and brewed.

He stopped the car and touched a button. The light showed booty. He had not expected this. He had wanted the car for an hour, to feel the thrill of it under his fingers, to taste again the luxury of its warmth and softness. He had meant to take it back unharmed–with nothing more than the restless ghost of his poor desires to haunt Whiting when again he entered it.

But now here were toys and things which Whiting, in a climax of generosity, had culled from bake-shop and grocer, from flower-shop, fruit-shop, and confectioner.

He snapped out the light and drove on. He had still a half-hour for his adventure.

It took just three of the thirty minutes to slide up to the curb in front of the tall tenement. He made three trips in and up to the top floor. He risked much, but Fate was with him and he met no one.

Fate was with him, too, when he left the car at a corner near the club, and slipped out of it like a shadow, and thence like a shadow back to the shop whence his steps had tended before his adventures.

When he returned to the tall tenement the small family on the first floor had finished supper, and the mother had gone back to work. The baby was asleep. Milly and Pussy, wrapped up to their ears, were hugging the waning warmth of the little stove.

“Mr. Tony, did you get the candle?” Pussy asked as he came in.

“Yes. But I’ve been thinking”–his manner was mysterious–“I don’t want to put it on the shelf. I want it in the window–to shine out–“

“To shine out–why?”

“Well, you know, there’s St. Nicholas.”

“Oh–“

“He ought to come here, Pussy. Why shouldn’t he come here? Why should he go up-town and up-town, and take all the things to children who have more than they want?”

Milly was philosophic. “St. Nicholas is fathers and mothers–“

But Pussy was not so sure. “Do you think he’d come–if we did? Do you really and truly think he would?”

“I think he might–“