To call it a courtyard hardly
described the place. It was more an open backyard common to the row of
tenements, and rather narrow and confined in space at that. It was
dirty, cluttered with rubbish, and across it, facing the rear of the
tenements, was a small building that many years ago had been, possibly,
a stable or an outhouse belonging to some private and no doubt
pretentious dwelling, which long since now, with the progress northward
of the city, had been supplanted by the crowded, poverty-stricken, and
anything but pretentious tenements. This outhouse had been to a certain
extent remodelled, and to a certain extent made habitable, and as long
as any one could remember Melinoff with his old-clothes shop had been
its tenant.
Jimmie Dale began to make his way cautiously across the yard, wary of
the tin cans and general rubbish which an inadvertent step might
metamorphose most effectively into a decidedly undesirable advertisement
of his presence. There was no light that he could see in Melinoff's at
all; and he frowned now in a puzzled way. Had the Pippin been and gone;
or was he, Jimmie Dale, ahead of the Pippin? The Pippin would have had
ample time, of course, to get here, for he, Jimmie Dale, had probably
remained in Bristol Bob's a good half hour after the Pippin had left.
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