“Have you a good photograph handy?” asked the squib, awakening from his trance.
Nine young gentlemen put the squib right about that photograph. Hickey was lost in the fields of Elysian phantasy, and the red-headed reporter was still writing and stuffing loose pages in his pocket, and the one with the beard was making a surreptitious sketch of Gerald Fosland, to use on the first plausible occasion. He had in mind a special article on wealthy clubmen at home.
“Company incorporated?” inquired Hickey, who was the most practical poet of his time.
“I should consider that a pertinent question,” granted Gerald. “Gentlemen, you will pardon me for a moment,” and he bowed himself from the room.
He had meant to ask that one simple question and return, but, in Arlene’s blue room, where sat two young women in a high state of quiver, he had to make his speech all over again, verbatim, and detail each interruption, and describe how they received the news, and answer, several times, the variously couched question, if he really thought their names would not be mentioned. It was fifteen minutes before he returned, and he found the twelve young gentlemen suffering with an intolerable itch to be gone! Five of the young men were in the library, quarrelling, in decently low voices, over the use of phone. The imperturbable Hickey, however, had it, and he held on, handing in a story, embellished and coloured and frilled and be-ribboned as he went, which would make the cylinders on the presses curl up.
“I am sorry to advise you, gentlemen, that I am unable to tell you if the International Transportation Company is, or is about to be, incorporated,” reported Gerald gravely, and he signalled to William to open the front door.
The air being too cold, however, he had it closed presently, for now he was the centre of an interrogatory circle from every degree of which came questions so sharply pointed that they seemed to flash as they darted towards him. Gerald Fosland listened to this babble of conversation with a courtesy beautiful to behold, but at the first good pause, he advised them that he had given them all the information at his command, and once more caused the door to be opened; whereupon the eager young gentlemen, with the exception of the squib, who was on his knees under a couch looking for a lost subway ticket, shook hands cordially and admiringly with the host of the evening, and bulged out into the night.
As the rapt and enchanted Hickey passed out of the door, a grip like a pair of ice tongs caught him by the arm, and drew him gently but firmly back.
“Sorry,” observed Gerald; “but you don’t go.”
“Hasn’t that damn boy got here yet?” demanded Hickey, in an immediate mood for assassination. He was a large young man, and defective messenger boys were the bane of his existence.