III
Because he never started. He was too busy.
Who was Dick Livingston? Dick did not know. He could remember that little cabin in the Wyoming mountains, the snow-storm, himself recovering from an illness, in the care of Doctor David—nothing back of that. The rest was walled off.
If he could only have a severe shock—a breaking point—get run over by a train or something—and awake surrounded by familiar things to stir his dormant memory—perhaps——?
Beverly Carlysle’s brother, Fred Gregory, saw him in the theatre. Louis Bassett, reporter on the Times-American, saw Gregory see him. What did it mean?
He hurried back to the office, got out the files of the paper for ten years back, read them through, advertisements and all, then read them through again. It was four o’clock in the morning when his eye fell on this advertisement:
“Wanted—Cook. Protestant preferred, anything taken. Apply L-22 this office.”
He clipped it, put it in his note book, packed his bag and took the midnight train for Wyoming.
Gregory hastened to Beverly Carlysle’s dressing-room.
“Counted the house?” she asked.
“Fourteen hundred and one,” he answered.
“Why so particular about the one?”
“He’s worth more than all the rest put together.”
“Who is he?”
(To be continued.)