“I’m a slow-mover with the fillies, worse luck!” the young man answered, shaking his head. “I wasn’t as blind as I seemed, either. I am going to try and get our demure friend with the blinkers out on the razzle-dazzle again to-night.”
“Not sure that I approve,” Jacob said. “I don’t think Morse cares much about that sort of thing, either.”
“I’m not entirely convinced, you know,” Felixstowe observed, “that we’ve quite got the hang of that fellow.”
“In what way?” Jacob enquired.
“Well,” his young companion continued, stretching himself out in the chair and lighting a fresh cigarette, “between you and me, Mr. Morse was pretty well-known at the low haunts we dropped in at last night. You can tell when a Johnny’s at home and when he isn’t, you know, and I saw him looking at me once or twice when they called him by his Christian name, for instance, as though he hoped I wasn’t catching on.”
“That seems quite reasonable,” Jacob observed. “Sam’s a pretty broadminded chap, but I dare say he wouldn’t like the idea of his secretary being a frequenter of all sorts of night haunts.”
“One for yours truly, eh?”
“Not at all. You are more a companion than a secretary, so far, and besides, you haven’t control over my finances. What have you been studying that directory for?”
Lord Felixstowe laid down the massive volume which he had just borrowed from the office clerk.
“Been looking ’em all up,” he confided. “Doctor Brand Bardolf, Physician, Number 1001 West Fifty-seventh Street—he’s there, with letters enough after his name to make a mess of the whole alphabet. Sydney Morse—he’s there, same address as Samuel Pratt. And the stockbrokers, Worstead and Jones, Number 202 Wall Street.”