He set up his post across the street, where, from behind a light-pole, he could look up and over.
A sudden rainstorm poured out of the sky, and with it a cold wind. But he had seen a shadow--of a man and woman, it seemed to him. And with the consuming zeal and drive with which he did everything, he remained there, drenched and shivering, ignoring everything but those windows.
But the exposure resulted in a second attack of pneumonia.
That tawdry anticlimax ended the life of the genius at whose feet Broadway had bowed--a martyr to suicidal jealousy at his advanced age--jealousy over a run-of-the-mill gal whose name no one would remember on the street that will never forget him.
When Georgie Cohan penned his crude classic, New York's Main Drag ran from Herald Square at 34th Street, on Broadway, to Times Square at 43rd Street, with tentacles precariously reaching northward a few blocks and a few outposts of the Tenderloin's last frontiers stretching southward.
Broadway's uptown growth had been progressive from historic days when the theatre and hotel zones were around City Hall Park, not far from the Battery.
During the years, successively, Diamond Ditch moved up, centering at 14th Street, then again at 23rd Street, coming to anchor at Herald Square before its final migration to Times Square.
Within memory of men who for old time's sake are still called "middle-aged," the crest of the White Way was in the 30's. Here such noted playhouses as the Herald Square, Garrick, Empire and Casino had clustered about them the town's half-a-hundred legit theatres. The still standing and thriving Metropolitan Opera House was then the Mecca of Pittsburgh millionaires.
On Broadway, in the district and its side streets, were famous cabarets and night clubs, places like the Normandie, the Pre-Cat, Café l'Opera and others.
The tide imperceptibly but inevitably flowed northward. Even while Herald Square was in its ascendancy, Times Square bloomed and blossomed, with 42nd Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, flashing more legitimate theatres than any other block in the world.
By the end of World War I, Gay Gulch had crossed the great divide, was almost entirely north of 42nd Street, though many theatres and a few night clubs continued to stay below 42nd Street as late as the early 20's.