“Wait!” called out Gerry, unhappily, pleadingly.
But Teddie had no intention of waiting. She withered him with one short look of revulsion, of utter repudiation, wheeled about, and strode out of the office.
She went, leaving behind her a blue-fox canteen muff and a much bluer young attorney who for quite a number of minutes stood staring morose and motionless out over the East River. He contemplated that wharf-fringed waterway very much as though he should like to take a header down into it. Then, as he slowly and dejectedly turned about, his eye fell on the forgotten muff.
He crossed to his desk and took the furry pillow up in his hands, turning it over and over. He meditatively stroked the deep pelt, sniffed at it, started for the door, and just as suddenly stopped. Then he quietly removed two tennis racquets and a box of golf-balls wrapped in a llama-wool sweater-coat from the bottom drawer of his desk and into this same drawer carefully tucked away the blue-fox muff—after which he stood, irresolute and unmoving, for another full five minutes.
Then Gerry West, as though to make up for lost time, exploded into a sudden fury of movement. He punched the buzzer-button for his stenographer, jerked down the messenger-call lever and caught up the telephone directory with one hand while he possessed himself of the receiver with the other.
“I’ll show ’em,” he muttered darkly to himself, “I’ll show ’em they can’t pull that cave-man stuff around my home circle!”
And in half an hour’s time he had an ex-pool-roomer from a private detective agency busily shadowing Gunboat Dorgan, and another quiet-moving agent gathering what data he could as to the physical disabilities of Raoul Uhlan, and an expeditious clerk from the outer office confirming the address and movements of a certain Miss Ruby Reamer. Then, having started these wheels into motion, he hurriedly looked up a point or two of law, consulted his watch, and called up Louis Lipsett, of The Star, at the Press Club.
“Louis,” he said over the wire, “I’ve got a great news story for you.”
“Good!” promptly announced the other.
“Yes, it’s so good, in fact, that you’ve got to come and help me kill it in the bud.”