No Man’s Land, A Romance
A GENTLEMAN who, leaving his offices on lower Broadway a trifle after four, presently ensconced himself in a corner seat of a Subway express and opened before him a damp afternoon paper (with an eye for the market reports) was surprised when the train crashed heavily into the Fourteenth Street station, to find himself afoot and making for the door: this. However, he had intended to alight at Grand Central. Thus, it may be that the trickster in us all, which we are accustomed vaguely to denominate the subconscious mind, directs our actions to an end predestined.
Surprised, he hesitated, and for that, he was rewarded by having his heels trodden by the passenger behind. This decided him, absurdly enough, and he went on and out, solacing himself with a muttered something, hardly definite, about a stroll benefiting him. So, transferring to a local train, he alighted at Twenty-third Street, climbed the stairs, and proceeded briskly west, buffeted by a rowdy wind.
Striking diagonally across Madison Square Park, past the drearily jetting fountain and between arrays of empty benches scarcely beggarly (since that class had deserted them for warmer lounging places), he turned northward on Fifth Avenue, threading the early evening crowds with a spring of impatience in his stride to distance casual competition; and received upon a mind still impressionable, for all that it had ample food for meditation and nursed a private grievance, a variety of pleasurable suggestions.
Dusk, the early violet dusk of late November, brooded over the city, blurring its harsh contours, subduing its too blatant youth, lending an illusion resembling the dim enchantment of antiquity. In the west, a cloudless sunset had faded to an afterglow of amethyst which, shading insensibly into mauve, toward the zenith blended with the deep purple of the shrouded east. Against this lucent curtain bulked monstrous walls with a broken skyline, now low, now lofty, dotted here and there on high with glittering windows, below rendered brilliant by a dado of illuminated plate-glass shielding covetable wares, the whole cut at regular intervals by the gullies of crosstown streets. Northward were strung parallel lines of opalescent arc lamps, swelling over the generous rise of Murray Hill like twin chains of luminous pearls upon a woman’s bosom.
Read or download Book
Louis Joseph Vance
Louis Joseph Vance (September 19, 1879 – December 16, 1933) was an American novelist, screenwriter and film producer. He created the popular character Michael Lanyard, a criminal-turned-detective known as The Lone Wolf.
Biography
Louis Joseph Vance was born September 19, 1879, in Washington, D. C., the only child of Wilson J. Vance, a Medal of Honor recipient, and Lillian Beall. He was educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Vance was married to Anne Elizabeth Hodges on February 19, 1898. Their son, Wilson Beall Vance, was born in 1900.
He wrote short stories and verses after 1901 and then composed many popular novels. His character Michael Lanyard, known as The Lone Wolf, was featured in eight books and 24 films between 1914 and 1949 and also appeared in radio and television series.
Vance moved to Los Angeles to work with Universal Pictures on films based on his work, including The Trey o’ Hearts (1914) and a serial and film series (1914–1916) based on his Terence O’Rourke stories. In 1915, he founded Fiction Pictures, Inc., a motion picture production company whose films were distributed by Paramount Pictures. Its first release was The Spanish Jade (1915), with a screenplay by Vance based on his stage adaptation of a novel by Maurice Hewlett. Vance was president and general manager of the company; other principals were Wilfred Lucas (director-general), Gilbert Warrenton (cinematographer), and Bess Meredyth (scenario editor). Fiction Pictures operated in Glendale until a new studio in Hollywood was completed in April 1915. The studio was sold to Famous Players in June when Fiction Pictures went out of business.
Vance died alone in his New York City apartment on December 16, 1933, in a fire that resulted from his falling asleep with a lighted cigarette. His death was ruled accidental. A simple funeral took place December 20, 1933, at St. George’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, with honorary pallbearers including Marc Connelly, Will Irwin, and Samuel Merwin.[5] Vance’s widow received an estate of less than $10,000.