Then she went in and shut the door.
He stood uncertainly in the hall. Then once again he faced the cold.
Around the corner was a shop where he would buy the red candle. The ten
cents which he would pay was to have gone for his breakfast. He had
sacrificed his supper that he might not go hungry on Christmas morning.
He had planned a brace of rolls and a bottle of milk. It had seemed to
him that he could face a lean night with the promise of these.
There were no red candles in the shop. There were white ones, but a red
candle was a red candle--with a special look of Christmas cheer. He
would have no other.
The turn of a second corner brought him to the great square. Usually he
avoided it. The blaze of gold on the west side was the club.
A row of motors lined the curb. There was Baxter's limousine and
Fenton's French car. He knew them all. He remembered when his own French
car had overshadowed Fenton's Ford.
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?"