topic shifted from Sue to himself. With a turbulent, passionate egotism he recounted his early difficulties in America, his struggles with the language, heart-breaking summers as a book agent, newspaper jobs in middle-western cities, theatrical press work from Coast to Coast, his plunge into the battle for a higher standard of theatrical art and the resulting fight, most desperate of his life thus far, to attract attention to the Crossroads Theater and widen its influence.
Zarin was vehement now. Words poured in a torrent from his lips. He talked straight at you, gesturing, with a light in his eye and veiled power in his slightly husky voice. Peter felt this power, and something not unlike a hatred of the man took sudden root within him.
“You will think me foolish to give my strength to this struggle. Like you, I know these Americans. You can tell me nothing about them. Oh, I have seen them, lived with them – in the city, in the small village, on the farm. I know that they are ignorant of Art, that they do not care.” He snapped his big fingers. “Vaudeville, baseball, the girl show, the comic supplement, the moving picture – that is what they like! Yet year after year, I go on fighting for the barest recognition. They do not understand. They do not care. They believe in money, comfort, conformity – above all conformity. They are fools. But I know them, I tell you! And I know that they will listen to me yet! I have shown them that I can fight for my ideals. Before we are through I shall show them that I can beat them at their own game. They shall see that I mean business. I shall show them their God Success in his full majesty… And publicity? They are children. When I have finished they – the best of them – will come to me for kindergarten lessons in publicity. I’m hoping to talk with you about it, Mann, I can interest you. I wouldn’t bring it to you unless I knew I could interest you.”
He turned toward Sue. “And this girl shall help me. She has the talent, the courage, the breeding. She will surprise the best of them. They will find her pure gold.”
Hushed with his own enthusiasm, he dropped his hand over one of Sue’s; took hers up in both of his and moved her slender fingers about as he might have played absently with a handkerchief or a curtain string.
Hy, across the table, took this in; and noted too the swift, hot expression that flitted across Peter’s face and the sudden set to his mouth.
Sue, alter a moment, quietly withdrew her hand. But she did not flush, as Betty had flushed in somewhat similar circumstances a few hours earlier.
Peter laid his hands on the table; pushed back his chair; and, lips compressed, got up.
“Oh,” cried Zanin – “not going?”
“I must,” Peter replied, slowly, coldly. “I have work to do. It has been very pleasant. Good night.”
And out he went.
Hy, after some hesitation, followed.
Peter did not speak until they were nearly across the Square. Then he remembered —
“The Walrus asked you where she was, did he?”
“He sure did.”
“Worried about her, I suppose!”
“He’s worried, all right.”
“Humph!” said Peter.
He said nothing more. At the rooms, He partly undressed in silence. Now and again his long face worked in mute expression of conflicting emotions within. Suddenly he stopped undressing and went into the studio (he slept in there, on the couch) and sat by the window, peering out at the sights of the Square.
Hy watched him curiously; then called out a good night, turned off the gas and tumbled into bed. His final remark, the cheery observation – “I’ll tell you this much, my son. Friend Betty is some pippin!” drew forth no response.
CHAPTER IV – A LITTLE JOURNEY IN PARANOIA
HALF an hour later Peter tiptoed over and closed the door. Then he sat down at his typewriter, removed the paper he had left in it, put in a new sheet and struck off a word.
He sat still, then, in a sweat. The noise of the keys fell on his tense ears like the crackling thunder of a machine gun.
He took the paper out and tore it into minute pieces.
He got another sheet, sat down at the desk and wrote a few hurried sentences in longhand.
He sealed it in an envelope, glancing nervously about the room; addressed it; and found a stamp in the desk.
Then he tiptoed down the room, softly opened the door and listened.
Hy was snoring.
He stole into the bedroom, found his clothes in the dark and deliberately dressed, clear to overcoat and hat. He slipped out into the corridor, rang for the elevator and went out across the Square to the mail box. There was a box in the hall down-stairs; but he had found it impossible to post that letter before the eyes of John, the night man.
For a moment he stood motionless, one hand gripping the box, the other holding the letter in air – a statue of a man.
Then he saw a sauntering policeman, shivered, dropped the letter in and almost ran home.
Peter had done the one thing that he himself, twelve hours earlier, would have regarded as utterly impossible.
He had sent an anonymous letter.
It was addressed to the Reverend Hubbell Harkness
Wilde, Scripture House, New York. It conveyed to that vigorous if pietistic gentleman the information that he would find his daughter, on the following evening, Saturday, performing on the stage of the Crossroads Theater, Tenth Street, near Fourth: with the added hint that it might not, even yet be too late to save her.
And Peter, all in a tremor now, knew that he meant to be at the Crossroads Theater himself to see this little drama of surprises come off.
The fact developed when Hy came back from the office on Saturday that he was meditating a return engagement with his new friend Betty. “The subject was mentioned,” he explained, rather self-consciously, to Peter.
The Worm came in then and heard Hy speak of Any Street.
“Oh,” he observed, “that piece of Zanin’s! I’ve meant to see it. You fellows going to-night? I’ll join you.”
So the three Seventh-Story Men ate at the Parisian and set forth for their little adventure; Peter and Hy each with his own set of motives locked up in his breast, the Worm with no motives in particular.
Peter smoked a cigar; the Worm his pipe; and Hy, as always, a cigarette. All carried sticks.
Peter walked in the middle; his face rather drawn; peeking out ahead.
Hy swung his stick; joked about this and that; offered an experimentally humorous eye to every young woman that passed.
The Worm wore the old gray suit that he could not remember to keep pressed, soft black hat, flowing tie, no overcoat. A side pocket bulged with a paper-covered book in the Russian tongue. He had an odd way of walking, the Worm, throwing his right leg out and around and toeing in with his right foot.
As they neared the little theater, Peter’s pulse beat a tattoo against his temples. What if old Wilde hadn’t received the letter!
