Then the transfer was made. It was all settled
in less than half an hour, unceremoniously, almost
hastily. For the sake of form Geary signed a
check for eight thousand dollars which Vandover in
his turn made over to Hiram Wade. The notary
filled out a deed of grant, bargain, and sale, pasting
on his certificate of acknowledgment as soon as Vandover
and Geary had signed. Geary took the abstract,
thrusting it into his breast-pocket. As far as
Vandover was concerned, the sale was complete, but
he had neither his properly nor its equivalent in money.
“Well,” declared Geary at length, “I
guess that’s all there is to be done. I’ll
get a release from old man Wade and send it to you
to-morrow or next day. Now, let’s go down
to the Imperial and have a drink on it.”
They went out, but the notary returned to the anteroom,
turning the spigot of the filter to right and left,
frowning at it suspiciously, refusing to be satisfied.
That particular room in the Lick House was well toward
the rear of the building, on one of the upper floors,
and from its window, one looked out upon a vast reach
of roofs that rose little by little to meet the abrupt
rise of Telegraph Hill. It was a sordid and grimy
wilderness, topped with a gray maze of wires and pierced
with thousands of chimney stacks. Many of the
roofs were covered with tin long since blackened by
rust and soot. Here and there could be seen clothes
hung out to dry. Occasionally upon the flanking
walls of some of the larger buildings was displayed
an enormous painted sign, a violent contrast of intense
black and staring white amidst the sooty brown and
gray, advertising some tobacco, some newspaper, or
some department store. Not far in the distance
two tall smokestacks of blackened tin rose high in
the air, above the roof of a steam laundry, one very
large like the stack of a Cunarder, the other slender,
graceful, with a funnel-shaped top. All day and
all night these stacks were smoking; from the first,
the larger one, rolled a heavy black smoke, very gloomy,
waving with a slow and continued movement like the
plume of some sullen warrior. But the other one,
the tall and slender pipe, threw off a series of little
white puffs, three at a time, that rose buoyant and
joyous into the air like so many white doves, vanishing
at last, melting away in the higher sunshine, only
to be followed by another flight. They came three
at a time, the pipe tossing them out with a sharp
gay sound like a note of laughter interrupted by a
cough.
But the interior of the room presented the usual dreary
aspect of the hotel bedroom—cheerless,
lamentable.
