"Tut, tut, man. If a friend can't get up for another friend, he ain't much of a friend. Tell your troubles."
"I 'm looking for a man, Beefy, who 's down there somewhere among your Chinks."
"Hitting the pipe?"
"I 'm afraid so."
"Have n't any address I suppose—don't know his favorite joint?"
"I don't know a thing about him except that he has been down there before—that he lit out again a little over an hour ago, half mad—and that I must find him."
"An hour ago, eh? That helps, some. There 's only a few of 'em open to the public at that time. But say, is there any special hurry? He's had time to get his dope by now. I 've got some work there in the morning."
"There's a girl waiting for him, Beefy, a girl who is paying big for every hour he's gone."
"So? Well, m' boy, guess we 'll have to get him then. I 'll be down in ten minutes. Make yourself at home on the doorstep."
Donaldson waited in the taxicab. For the first time in his life he computed the value of one-sixth of an hour. So long as he had been with the girl—or so long as he had been active in her behalf—the minutes were filled with sufficient interest to make them pass unreckoned. But to sit here and wait, to sit here and watch the seconds wasted, to sit here and be conscious of each one of them as it bit, like a thieving wharf rat, into his dwindling Present and carried the morsel of time back to the greedy Past, was a different matter. When finally Saul appeared with a fat cigar in one corner of his chubby mouth, Donaldson was halfway across the sidewalk to meet him.