CHAPTER 11THE THIEVES’ BALL.
The approach to the floor of the Flamingo Feather was past a bakery, a pawnshop, a drink parlor, all decorous and dreary. Then there was a door distinguished by a bracket extending a black, iron basket in which a yellow electric bulb glowed. Over the street, this and a single iron feather painted flame color made a flaunt of festivity. From the door stretched a hall, tinted Pompeian red and reaching toward gents’ smoking rooms and the placarded penetralia of ladies; upward led iron stairs to the ballroom, let by the hour or evening, at rates proclaimed on a card.
I realized, as I entered, that I had heard of this place—or at least of its sister ballrooms—scores of times. For here revelled those indefinite, intriguing organizations named, by their members, “Th
