CHAPTER XXV

The Desperate Clown!

Allstyn, facing his client, the berouged Piffington Wainwright, shook his head at the other’s fierce demand to point out the way—subterranean or otherwise!—by which the latter could break his radio-writing contract.

“I know no way,” Allstyn said gruffly.

“But there—there must be a way to break it,” insisted the other.

“Well, there isn’t. By law, you understand. And why on earth,” Allstyn went on, “you folks who come to me—and have—during the years—with open-and-shut contracts, correctly drawn up, with considerations paid, and all that, expecting that your contract can just be set aside—just like that!”—And Allstyn gave a light snap of his fingers “—willy-nilly, as it were—for no more than the implied wish to do so, I can’t, for the life of me, understand. I can sympathize with you all—yes—for you all have motives for wanting ‘out.’ But understand your case I can’t. For, Piffington, a contract is, essentially, an agreement which is set down in writing and signed in order that it can’t later be broken. Broken, that is, at the whim of one or the other party. That is what a contract is! An unbreakable agreement. Not a breakable one. You can’t set such things aside—much less get any court in the land to do so—when they’ve been signed with eyes open on all sides, by people of legal age and adult minds, and with considerations passed, and whatnot. The best that can ever he done in such cases is perhaps to negotiate an adjudication where a comma is, by accident, in the wrong place—and some sentence holds diametrically opposite meanings. Or negotiate a compromise where one clause conflicts in meaning with another clause. But in your contract, Piffington, there aren’t even enough clauses to create inter-clause conflict. Your contract is open-and-shut. It—”

“But—but it’s peonage!” almost shouted Piffington.

“Not at all,” Allstyn rebuked him. “Peonage is quite and indeed another thing entirely—when you look into it. No, sale of exclusive services, for any length of time, is as legal as—as buying that brass Buddha paperweight of mine over there. Yes! Your contract is square and aboveboard. Cutthroat perhaps, yes. Irritating—yes. And all that. But legal. Now you wanted me to be honest, you know? So I’m going to show you how honest I really am. Here—” He removed the brass paperweight from the $10 bill, lying in front of him, and slid the bill over to the other. “Here is your money back. For I don’t really need money, to be candid. And here, also, is your full legal opinion: Your contract cannot be broken—and any lawyer who tells you so will only be trying to get litigation fees out of you.”

Piffington Wainwright sat dolefully in his chair.

“Coming from you,” was all he said, bitterly, “I’ve—well—I’ve got to accept such a verdict.” But now, returning to earth, he was restoring—with alacrity—the returned $10 bill to his well-stuffed wallet. One who, Allstyn saw amusedly, did not allow Opportunity to thunder at his door. But Allstyn liked the other’s utter directness—no hypocrisy—with long arguments about why the $10 should not be returned.

“I’m afraid you will have to accept such verdict,” affirmed Allstyn. “For my opinion is an honest opinion, For I like to break downright faulty contracts—such as, for instance, where somebody has tried to write his own legal paper, and succeeded only in creating something so full of contradictions that the profiting party is glad, before I get done with him, to tear up the paper. Yes, I like to break such contracts—and make large fees. But I can’t break this. No! But enough on that score, however. Piffington, you are a fool! You have a connection which, as you gave me to understand a few minutes back, is now worth 3 scripts a week to you—or $45 a week. You can live where you want to, I take it, sending in your stuff by mail—” Piffington Wainwright nodded. “And you have the ability to sustain your connection almost indefinitely, for you have a God-given talent for doing something that kids literally eat up. Yet you want to—”

“Oh,” said Piffington Wainwright with a disdainful wave of his hand, “I can do that junk—forever and forever—before even my morning cup of tea is drunk each morning; do it, moreover, with one hand tied behind my hack. It’s the dramatic crime-stuff that I want to do. It’s—”

“Dramatic crime-stuff? Well, what groundwork—occupational groundwork, let me amplify that—do you have for doing it? For instance—have you ever done private investigative work? But I see you haven’t—by the emphatic shake of your head. Well, have you ever—but just what were you doing, in New York, at the time you discovered you could supplement your income by writing bedtime tales?”

“I was a lapilist—or what you would call ‘burlap specialist.’”

“Burlap specialist? What do you mea—”

“Simply that I had been a burlap clerk who had learned so much about burlap, that I was promoted over the other clerks to the position of lapilist, with an additional $5 a week salary.”

“Wait. I thought burlap—was just burlap?”

“So does the rest of the world. No, there are more kinds of burlap—such as that made from jute, flax, hemp, manila—et cetera—and more aspects thereto—and more kinds of weave—than you could ever imagine. For instance, you would not know, I fancy, that it is possible to calculate the exact weave of a piece of burlap by measuring the distance through which the burlap permits visibility of objects behind it. I discovered that—and put it into a formula which is used today to check burlap weave counts. And—”

“Well, that’s most interesting, to say the least. However, a knowledge of burlap, I take it, wouldn’t be much help in writing crime stuff, at least regularly, and so—well, speaking again of groundwork and whatnot, have you ever gone out to a penitentiary—one like, say, our famous Moundsville, containing cell blocks that are the newest creation in penology, as well as cell blocks that are the oldest and most archaic—and inmates ranging from the softest to the hardest—and gone all the way through it? And talked with the men?”

“Good heavens, no! And besides, how could I—ever accomplish that?”

“How? Good Lord, Piffington! A ‘famous’ radio writer like you? Why you could tell the warden you were just in town a couple of hours—and making a study of the ‘radio-mentality’ of the men, having heard that many of them tuned in on kid stuff. On your stuff, in short. And you could—but let it pass. Well, did you ever visit, through the help of a friendly State’s Attorney—or say, an attorney for the defense—a real crook—in a real cell—on a real charge?”

“Why, no! I nev—”

“Well, have you ever seen a real big-time criminal?”

“We-ell—I waited one day—after the radio had announced that Emory Peters had been captured in Elgin, Illinois—I waited next that famous door in the City Hall that’s said to lead down to—”

“Oh, yes—I read that article too! It was in the Gazette, wasn’t it? Some feature story titled ‘The Door from Which No Man Returneth!’ For the reason that through it go the State’s Attorney’s prize catches—toward the chair! I’ve been through that door myself—but on business. There’s quite a scandal about that tiny drugstore whose show window is right plumb next it. The store with the revolving lamp going ever around, in the focus of several inclined mirrors. For—but maybe you know the scandal, eh?”

“No, I do not. I may have been in New York—or elsewhere—when it broke. I know the window you speak of—and the revolving lamp—from having waited there—to see that Emory Peters. But not the scandal.”

“Well,” Allstyn elucidated, “the little store is known, you know, as the Little Revolving Lamp Drugstore. It being an offspring of the more well-known and larger Revolving Lamp Drugstore—on Van Buren and Dearborn. And it—the little store—got into the City Hall—of all sacrosanct places!—with one entrance on the street, and one inside the foyer—through a direct pull between the owner of the main R. L. Drug Store—and the Mayor. And—however—did you get to see Emory Peters—by waiting there—next the famous door?”

“No, I did not. I waited full two hours. And a detective—at least he wore, on his vest, a gold star, all fringed with little diamonds—though I can’t, for the life of me, imagine for what kind of a deed a red-faced lout like him, with a scar on his chin, would have been honored with a star like that—anyway, this detective came along and said—hrmph—he said—that is—”

“Well—what did he say?”

“Well, the filthy oaf said, ‘Beat it, Gertrude, before I run you in.’”

Allstyn tried to keep his face straight. And to cover his embarrassment added:

“Well, what did you say? Or did you say—anything?”

“Indeed I did! I spoke up. And said plenty.”

“Well—what on earth did you—could you say?”

“Why—I said to him, I said: ‘You go to hell, you dirty goddamned bastard of a grandmother-raping son-of-a-bitch.’”

“Ow-w!” said. Allstyn, putting his fists to his head. “Was that telling him—things! And—and what did he do?”

“He? He looked at me and said, ‘Excuse me, buddy—my mistake. But we police make it a point to keep people moving—in City Hall Block.’”

Allstyn shook his head hopelessly.

“You are a most amazing individual, Piffington,” was all he could say. “But of course the said ‘detective’—well that is—but just between us now, Piffington, as man to man, don’t you know—and all in friendliness—why do you use—use rouge—on your cheeks?”

“Why? For two reasons. One, I am an aesthete. And am pained by my ordinarily pale complexion. Second, my body belongs to me—and nobody else.”

“Bravo! Your case is carried—on either point alone. Hm!” And Allstyn surveyed his ever collected client. “Well—you sure put a high-up member of the Chicago Police Department smack in his place! For the man you jumped on was—believe it or not—no less than Chicago’s Chief of Police—”

“No?” ejaculated Piffington, leaning forward, mouth agape.

“A fact! For you said, didn’t you, that he wore a diamond-fringed gold star?—had a red face?—and a scar on his chin? Well that was Philander Moriarity, Chicago’s famous Police Chief who was known—at least years back, when he was Chief Inspector at the Detective Bureau—as the Nemesis of the Parson Gang, a gang of rascals who were outwitting the police back in the days of your youth, but most of whom are pushing up daisies today—or serving life sentences. Moriarity loves City Hall Block—loves to stroll about it, in plain clothes; they say that on a vacation trip he took to South America two years ago, he wandered his City Hall Block up till time to take his plane for New Orleans—and, on the very first hour he was back in Chicago, went to his City Hall Block first and immediately!”

“I—I think,” said Piffington Wainwright, “that you’re spoofing me. Either about a Philander Moriarity being Chief of Police of Chicago—for I know absolutely nothing about local politics here—or that, if he is, the man I unloaded all that blistering vituperation on was he!”

“But I’m not spoofing you,” declared Allstyn, “on either fact. I might perhaps tell you, if you don’t believe me, to open yonder telephone book, look up the name ‘Philander Moriarity,’ and note the words after it which I happen to know say ‘Executive Head, Chicago Police Department.’ I might even urge you to ring him tonight at his home, and catch the sound of his voice. Except for the fact that—”

“Except for what?” asked Piffington, with a peculiar tone in his voice that, to Allstyn, seemed to say the other was looking forward to unloading shortly some more billingsgate on P. Moriarity—but telephonically only!

“Except for,” said Allstyn hastily, “that Philander Moriarity left Chicago, by air, last night at midnight, on another vacation—Asia, according to this morning’s Trib—Australia, according to this morning’s Herald-Ex—Alaska, according to today’s early News!—he detests reporters, it’s said, and won’t talk to ’em; so the only thing the Municipal Airport newshounds could get was from the ticket-window, and that he was booked straight through to Frisco, but with a stop-off at Denver—to recover from that ol’ Rocky Mountain airsickness!—till the 3 p.m. Denver-Frisco plane today. And so puh-lease, Piffington, don’t go calling his quarters; for he not only, as now you see, won’t be there, but calls to police chiefs are invariably traced even while they’re being made—and you’ll only get yourself in more Dutch than you were the day Moriarity encountered you there on City Hall Bl—but that’s more or less what I’m really trying to get at: namely, that Moriarity, in accosting you that day, was only fulfilling a necessary and obligatory duty of any policeman high or low, in a troublesome block—yes, City Hall Block—around which there are always so many strange—and therefore suspicious—characters going, just as there are about Old Post Office Block, and—”

“Isn’t it the truth?” Piffington acquiesced. “Only this morning, while coming out of the Old Post Office, after registering one of my scripts to New York, I saw a girl tramping along the block, and carrying—of all things—a lavender gripsack.”

“A gripsack? Good heavens! I didn’t know such things still existed. And lavender? How—”

“Yes, Mr. Allstyn, lavender. For ’twas made of carpet—that had been a brilliant lavender. Anyway, people turned and stared after her like nobody’s business.”

“No doubt! We’re chronic starers here in Chicago. And as rude as they make ’em. And—however, I was trying, a moment back, to sort of—of plumb your capabilities, don’t you know, for writing the stuff you want to write. And so—continuing along that line—have you ever visited the corpse of a murdered man—in the police department morgue?”

“The corpse—of a murdered man? Great heavens—no! And what could I discover—if I did?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Allstyn said frankly. “Maybe pick up some clue that would help a State’s Attorney send two men to the chair—or three—instead of one.”

“But—but my business isn’t sending two—three—any men to the chair. It’s—but anyway, there are no murdered men just now in the Chicago police department morgue.”

“True. Or perhaps so. For, in Chicago, one never knows what will come to pass between strokes of the clock. However, try it sometime—unless, of course—” Allstyn gave a shrug of his shoulders, “—the sight of a dead man is repellent to you?”

“Repellent?” repeated Piffington Wainwright in apparent utter surprise. “Why—how could it be? A dead man is nothing but a live man with the vital principle drawn out. If the vital principle that’s drawn out isn’t in itself repellent—then what’s left certainly can’t be.”

Allstyn passed a hand helplessly over his forehead. “Well—by gosh—I never heard it put quite that way before. However, Piffington, sometimes one’s emotional self finds something repellent. Quite against the dictates of one’s cool reason. And—”

“Well, no dead man exists,” declared Mr. Wainwright, “that could cause the tiniest flurry in my psyche. Fact is, I once had an undertaker friend who always called me in just before shipping his lady corpses to the house—to apply the rouge and lipstick. He was a clumsy ox—and I flatter myself that I fixed him up some mighty de luxe corpses.”

Allstyn stared. “Once again, Piffington, I declare you’re a strange chap. For—but getting back again to the concrete matter of building fiction out of at least some semblance of fact, have you ever, for instance, watched a criminal attorney working—in the hours just before a trial?—working desperately for an acquittal?”

“Why, no, I—”

“Well, did you ever, then, attend a hard-fought murder trial?”

“No, never! But why should—”

Allstyn made a significant gesture with his hands.

“But you don’t understand,” expostulated Piffington Wainwright, obviously catching the meaning of the gesture. “Authors don’t have to know anything about what they write!” Allstyn’s mouth was opening for a vigorous denial. “Authors,” the other reaffirmed vehemently, “don’t have to know anything whatsoever—about what they write. A fact, Mr. Allstyn! If—if an author wants to stage a scene on the Sahara Desert he—he just steps down to the Oak Street beach—on a hot noonday—and gets the atmospheric ‘feel’ of things. And—”

“But where will said author, for instance, get, for instance, the lingo that professional crooks use?”

“Oh—that?” said Piffington disdainfully. “Any 10-cent pulp-paper magazine contains yards and yards of that. Like, for instance, a safe being a ‘pete.’ Hmph! Why, a man could—if he collated the data in those stories—go out and become a professional safe cracker. Could even blow a safe, and correctly measure out the—the—soup.”

“Well, that builds up my very contention,” persisted Allstyn. “Those fellows who wrote those stories did have the correct dope. Not so?”

“No doubt. But why should I feel I have to dig it all out again? If they have it—and I get it from them—then I have it. And—and everybody’s happy.”

Allstyn stared at Wainwright.

“You are a most blissful combination, Piffington, of theory and—and pragmatism, I have ever encountered.”

“Indeed? Well that was exactly what a chap who was encumbered with religion—many religions in fact—once told me.”

“Encumb—well—have you no religion?”

Piffington shrugged his shoulders daintily. And replied: “Just that while I’m here on earth, I’m here—and when I’m dead, I’m non est—and when my specific moment comes, I have to pass on—like it or not—willy-nilly.”

“But what do you mean—your specific moment?”

“Why—that every living thing in the world has a certain moment set—oh, not by some fool score-keeper—no—but by the plan in—in which everything is meshed—for that living thing or person to check out. And when that moment is there—it has to go.”

“Yonder fly?—the last one of the season,” asked Allstyn, “has its moment?”

“Of course.”

Allstyn picked up a wire flyswatter.

“All right. Now I’m going to whack him into Kingdom Come. Note—I poise the flyswatter. If I come down—I change his moment, do I not?”

“Not at all. For if you come down, you merely have certified that ’twas his moment!”

“But good God, Piffington, if I don’t come down, it isn’t his moment then, is it?”

“Obviously not.”

“Yet if I do—it is his moment?”

“Obviously.”

“Then—then the moment isn’t fixed, is it?”

“Oh, yes, it’s fixed,” declared Piffington. And then delivered a triumph of feminine logic. “For you would only have occasion to decide to smash him when his moment is nigh and ready!”

Allstyn laid his swatter gently back—and unused—on the desk. The fly—spared—flew gaily off.

“Well,” Allstyn declared, jumping off philosophical argument with P. Wainwright with seven-league boots, “you were saying, Piffington, that an author doesn’t have to know a blamed thing about the things he writes. But doesn’t he have to feel the people he creates?”

“Oh yes, surely. But that is easy.”

“Easy? Well, I—”

“Well, of course—you have to have some faculty—for giving imitations. As I do.”

“Oh, do you? Professionally?”

“Oh no. At parties—and private gatherings. Last night I was at a party—was there all night in fact, from eight in the evening till dawn—at Buford van der Zook’s, the artist who—”

“Oh—Buford van der Zook? I know him. A charming fellow, don’t you think?”

“I very much do,” affirmed Piffington. “One of the finest hosts I’ve ever encountered.”

“But what do you think of his oils?”

“I think they’re above the heads of most people.”

“Maybe that is so. For I—but you gave some imitations at his party last night? I bet he was pleased. For he goes in for unusual and talented guests.”

“I hope he was pleased. For I did my best. Before his dozen or so guests. And my vocal cords were in fine fettle. For low-pitched imitations—and high-pitched ones. In fact, I did one of Albert Einstein—figuring out a new relativity theory. And I—I even imitated Mae West. Which latter imitation required a wiggle—as well as correct handling of the vocal cords.”

Allstyn grinned openly at the idea of Piffington giving a Mae Westian wiggle. And hastily got off that subject. “We’re off the track again, I see,” he said pleasantly. “But before getting on again, I must again say, Piffington, that you’re one of the strangest characters I’ve ever encountered in all my professional life. Bar none! You’re—you’re a thousand inconsistent traits, blended together.”

“But consistently,” amended Piffington unsmilingly. “For no person is really inconsistent, you know. If he were, he couldn’t enter into social or business relationships—carry on—even function in the social system.”

“Right and correct,” Allstyn conceded. “Well, about my various tips on getting practical hints on crime-story writing, it seems that—”

“I thank you for them,” put in Piffington Wainwright. “But with respect to all of them, and on all of which I’ll at least reflect, I reaffirm that I can do dramatic crime-story stuff, concerning criminals and policemen, that will raise the hair on your scalp. And I—”

“Well, after all,” said Allstyn, more kindly, “I really don’t know anything about all that. I confess I can’t believe that Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster would turn your crime-story material down—if it really was dramatic. And convincing. Though God knows I’ve heard the tale about how Zenith Pictures, Inc., in Hollywood made a complete picture called The Bloody Corpse in the Forest, with Bela Rogosi, and finally produced it as The Big Red Doll in the Woods, with Shirley Hemple. And about how Izzy Villmatsch, of United Pictures, started a million-dollar production on a script which he happened by pure accident to pick up in the studio and read, and which was actually a mixture of two different scripts that hadn’t been assorted back into their respective selves! And of how Heimie Berngreiner, the head of Amalgamated Films, instructed his script editor to ‘get hold of this feller Poe in Baltymore’ and ‘get some of them hairraising scrips.’ And of how Radio station W. W. N., right here in Chicago—the World’s Worst Nuisance, I call it!—signed on 100 ‘genuine’ hillbillies for the assembling of the ‘greatest hillbilly band in creation’—and got no less than Roger Hyer’s Orchestra, all out on strike from New York. Crazy—all of those radio and movie people are, I know—from screen to microphone. And—but all I can say, again, for your $10—receipt of which I acknowledged, but acceptance of which I gladly forego!—is that you can’t break the contract. Under which circumstances therefore, the only way for you to get it broken is to—”

Allstyn broke off himself. A bit embarrassedly. And said no more. Glancing meaningfully at his watch, instead. Then he rose.

“The only way,” Piffington Wainwright was repeating puzzledly, “for me to get it broken—is to—to what?” But catching the hint that the interview was over, he too arose, though he did not put his hat on his head.

“Oh—really nothing,” Allstyn replied hastily. “And don’t forget your contract there!”

“I don’t want the ten I’ve taken back from you,” Piffington Wainwright declared determinedly. “I—I want to know how to break that contract.”

“Very well,” sighed Allstyn. “Take up your paper, then. But keep your ten. And I’ll finish what I started to say.”

Piffington Wainwright restored the paper to his breast pocket. And arrested in mid-air his hand which was moving toward the billfold.

“Well, Piffington,” the lawyer said reluctantly, “no attorney of decent repute ever makes it a practice, don’t you know, to hand out information—or advice—of this nature. And certainly I never have—in all my days in this profession. For it isn’t high ethics—it isn’t, by George, ethics. No! But perhaps in your case—um—there are justifications. Justifications, that is, for at least telling you what some unscrupulous lawyer might tell you. Hrmph! Anyway, the point is this: You have tried a number of mild and—er—genteel expedients towards inducing Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster to tear up, as it were—and friendly like, as it were—your 20-year paper. Which of course they won’t do. But if you should—ahem!—make yourself the fly in their ointment—the—the arsenic in their morning coffee—they’d mighty soon—” he broke off painfully.

“Make myself—the arsenic—in their morning coffee? How?”

“How! Hrmph! Well if you were engaged in one of the many lines of work, Piffington, which I have come to be familiar with, through contract work, I could better explicate exactly what I mean. But I know absolutely nothing about the radio-writing game. While you, on the other hand, know everything about it—from writing to broadcasting. So ought you ask me how?”

“Well no—I daresay I oughtn’t. No. But the fly—in their ointment? And the arsenic—in their morning coffee! I—” And now a great light suddenly went over Piffington Wainwright’s dainty features. “I get it now, really. Or, a the Germans say: Es gehts mir ein licht auf! Yes, I get it quite, Mr. Allstyn. My stance—my stance has been all wrong! For I have been going about, on my very—er—belly, seeking to get the contract broken. And the more I go about thus—the more the other side wants to retain it unbroken. Yes. I see! My stance has been all wrong! I should make them want to get it broken. And it should be they—yes—who should come crawling to me—on their—er—bellies—yes—begging me to accept back my contract. Even better yet, yelling aloud—for all to hear—that they’ve broken it themselves, hear ye, hear ye, hear ye! Strange, confound it, that I had to come up here, Mr. Allstyn, just to get the gist of a most obvious idea. But isn’t that—just like life? Yes indeed.

“But I have it all straight in my mind now,” Wainwright continued, nodding. “The arsenic in their coffee! And not only the arsenic in their coffee, but—if you don’t mind my vulgarity, Mr. Allstyn—the bee in their pants—in the pants of Messrs. Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster. Yes, everything is crystal-clear to me now. So listen in, from now on, Mr. Allstyn, on your various crime-story hours, and before very long you’ll be hearing one of my creations. Since before I’m done now, Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster shall crawl to me on six knees—well, say four knees, since Adlai always stays in Pittsburgh—asking me to call it a day. Better yet, bruiting it far and wide that I, P. Wainwright, am not their property. Yes, I got it at last. And I’m off now. For I—” He put his hat on his head, “—I positively won’t steal another second of your valuable time. Good day and thanks. And—”

“Well, how—how,” asked Allstyn troubledly, “will you—er—be going about all this? Which, damn it all, Piffington, I don’t officially—ahem—counsel—or advise. For—”

“No, I quite understand that, of course. Your ‘suggestions’ are between the two of us only. But how—I think you asked—will I go about this? Well—I wouldn’t know that just now. But I’ll find a way. It’s sufficient, for the second, to know the proper stance. Yes. The fly in the ointment. The arsenic in the coffee. The bee in the pants. How else could—but I’ve plainly far overstayed my welcome—and I am going!” And Piffington Wainwright turned toward the door. “Happy to have met you, Mr. Allstyn. And I’m off now—to concentrate!”

Allstyn scratched his head. To himself only he said: “This confounded clown would burn up his circus—all the animals—the trapezes—and the sideshows—just to get his chance—to play Hamlet!” Aloud he said: “Well, I’ll be glad, at least—to hear the first broadcast—of your new material.”

Mr. Wainwright was now at the door. And partly opened it, in fact, and stood with his hand on the knob. “You will,” he replied confidently. “Moreover, I’ll even let you know how I acted on your adv—suggestion. Since, at this second, I don’t know myself. But, as I said, I’ll find a way. Yes—I’ll find a way!”

And he was gone.

And a quarter minute later, as Allstyn stood troubledly with his driving gauntlets on, and his bag in one hand, the sound of the elevator gates, in the hall outside the outer reception room, closing on the determined Hamlet-playing clown, filtered in to the lawyer—thanks to the fact that Squires had entered, and had left open the door to the outside reception room.

“I’m leaving now, Squires—and must run,” Allstyn said hurriedly. “That young man has kept me considerably longer, however, than the five minutes we alloted to him; so I’ll not even try now to go to the Ulysses S. Grant Building and—”

“Very well, sir. Anyway, the Railway Express Company phoned five minutes ago that that package was the one containing the missing Striebel documents.”

“Good! Then there’d be no need whatsoever of your having to catch me at Elsa Colby’s. Where now I shan’t be, anyway. Well, it appears we’re all cleaned up then. So good-by—and see you in 3—4 days.”

“Good-by, sir—and good luck. And oh yes, I didn’t fill out a card at all on that young man—ahem—client, who just called. If you don’t mind, sir, telling me what name I shall set down, I’ll fill same out.”

“Oh yes. Well, make out one card, Squires, reading ‘Mr. Sentimental Tommy. Address: Land o’ Dreams.’”

“Mr.—Sentimental Tommy, sir? Surely his name isn’t—”

“Didn’t you ever, Squires, read Barrie? And didn’t you hear our client, as he went out, say ‘I’ll Find a way!’? Yes, Squires. The name is S. Tommy, Esquire. Good day!”