Val looked blank, thinking of emus.
"French for grub cards. A swell like you ought to be on to that. But I'm just thinkin' what there is for you. This stunt of mine I dropped into by luck. 'Twas Shakespeare introduced me—like he did to you tonight."
"Why Shakespeare?" Loveland cut in.
"Oh, there's a—a girl in that story: actress in the theatre where I suped—a real actress, mind you, a Fascinator from Fascinatorville. Why Lil so much as looked at me, I don't know—but she did. I was near twice her age, and 'twould have been playin' the game too low down to try and hook onto her, though I was tempted—she was so pretty, so good to me. I don't know what would 'a been the upshot, if the property man, who had his eye on the gal, hadn't got me the sack, and Lil an engagement on the road. She and I drifted apart. I never wrote, though she asked me to; I knew 'twas better not, for her. But you see why I'm nuts on the dog. He was hers, and Shakespeare was her name for him. She loved Shakespeare's plays, and her ambition was to act in 'em. But all that's somethin' I wouldn't 'a mentioned—if you hadn't kind of earned the right to Shake's history. I was tellin' you about my speciality, and how Shake introduced me to it. We was on our beam ends, Shake and me, our ribs showin' through the silk. One mornin' after a night out—like this, only in a square downtown, I was circulatin' around till I blew into Twelfth Street, and dropped my eyes onto a new restaurant, with a good fried smell, and an idea hit my brain like a hammer. In I walks and offers to swop it with the boss for a dinner. He wasn't takin' any just then, but I talked till I waked him up, showed him what I could do in the art line, and began to work on the spot with a grand new thing in meenoos. I've been at it ever since, and though the pay don't go up by leaps and bounds, the house has, and lots o' the eaters say it's my work's made it what it is—brought in the public like a flock of sheep. I get two meals and three dimes a day out of the job, and I wouldn't be sleepin' in my country house tonight, if I hadn't run acrost a guy who needed my money more than I did. Well, it's all in the day's work; and I guess there ain't many swells have got a finer palace than this, though it's kind of draughty. Your castle across the pond ain't got a finer park, I bet?"
"My castle's full of draughts, too," Loveland humoured him.
"So you came over here to get out of 'em?"
"Exactly."
"And that fortune you want to retrace, or retrieve. Wisht I could help."
"I'm expecting a cablegram in the morning, that will put me all right, thank you," said Loveland. "You're a good chap, and I'm glad to have met you, for you've—er—broadened my outlook, as well as passed the time. I've only to worry through till tomorrow."
"That's some hours off," said Bill Willing. "Wisht I could invite you to my hotel where I hang out when I'm not at my country place, but the trouble is to see the colour of your money, or you don't see the colour of their beds."