Explore "Blackguard" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Filled with these gloomy realities he walked down a roughly bright street where the underworld tiptoed furtively between the ranks of semi-respectable working-people -- a street of gaping, sleekly sinister saloons, cabarets, small, thickly tawdry shops, and cheap, coffin-like hotels and apartment houses. The hour was early -- nine p.m. -- and he walked slowly, engaged in his favorite pastime of watching the shrouded haste of crowds. As he passed a moving-picture theater, dotted with greasy electric lights and plastered with inanely gaudy posters, he felt a light hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Lucy standing before him. The sight gave him a friendly shock, for on this evening he was tired of clever hypocrisies and longed for anything that would be crude and unassuming.
"Lucy, have you fallen down from some sky? " he asked.