But despatch was not Mazie's forte. And so, while she was still prinking in the bedroom, and Claude was cooling his heels in the kitchen, Hutchins Burley arrived. When Claude opened the door, the hulking Falstaffian form entered, puffing and panting, overheated with liquor as well as with climbing the stairs.
"Haven't kept the old girl waiting, have I?" he gasped, between breaths.
"Oh, no," said Claude, evasively. "She has gone ahead."
Burley, who had evidently not seen the note Cornelia had tacked on the door, acted as if he had not heard Claude's remarks either. He tramped to the door of the first bedroom, opened it unceremoniously and, when he found it empty, stalked noisily to the second.
"Where the devil is Cornelia?" he demanded, turning to Mazie.
"She was hungry and went on to the Asia Minor."
"Alone?"
"Well, Robert Lloyd happened to be here. He went too."
A sulphurous explosion of oaths testified to "Big Burley's" feelings.
Hutchins Burley was a sinister personage both in newspaper and in radical circles. Among artists who eked out their scanty talents with alcoholic inspiration and took a serious view of the Bohemianism of the Lorillard tenements, he cut a considerable figure. Others dreaded or avoided him.