"
"That's just what I want--she should let it fall."
"Roody, Roody, I hope it's tails."
The coin rolled to the bed-edge, bounced off to the floor, rolled to the
zinc edge.
Immediately after, on all-fours, his face screwed up for scrutiny and
the back of his neck hotly ridden with crimson, Mr. Pelz leaned after.
"Roody--what?"
"Heads!"
Where Riverside Drive reaches its rococo climax of the
twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year and twelve-story-high apartment-house de
luxe and duplex, and six baths divided by fourteen rooms is equal to
solid-marble comfort, Elsinore Court, the neurotic Prince of Denmark and
Controversy done in gilt mosaics all over the foyer, juts above the
sky-line, and from the convex, rather pop-eyed windows of its top story,
bulges high and wide of view over the city.
From one of these windows, looking north, Rudolph Pelz, by the
holding-aside of a dead weight of pink brocade and filet lace, could
gaze upon a sweep of Hudson River that flowed majestically between the
great flank of the city and the brobdingnagian Palisades.
After a day when he had unerringly directed the great swinging crane of
this or that gigantic transaction it had a laving effect upon him--this
view of sure and fluent tide that ran so perpetually into infinitude.
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