Very casually she had said at parting, "Thank you so much for all your care of me—and dine with us at seven-thirty, won't you? I shall try to have a friend here that I think may help you."
A long time he lay, reviewing that chaotic first hour in the world. Everything throbbed here, it seemed. One lived more quickly. And how long could the body endure it? Suddenly he felt his own pulses beating at a rate to terrify. He caught his breath and listened. He could hear the monstrous beats—they were actually shaking the sofa on which he lay. He thought of heart disease. He might be dying there—and they would wait dinner for him. He sprang up desperately. The sinister beating ceased. He put his hand to his heart, listened tensely, and heard again that which had alarmed him, the pulsing beat of a steam pump somewhere far below. In his relief he laughed aloud.
As he set about opening his trunks he was marveling at clothes lines he had seen stretched high between the rear walls of houses. How did people ever hang clothes on lines fifty feet from the ground? Truly it was a city of wonders.
He took out a suit of evening clothes that had been his father's. He had found that the suit fitted him, and he and Ben had assured themselves by reference to the pictured heroes in magazine advertisements that its cut was nearly enough in the prevailing mode. Ewing had also found some cards of his father's which would convey his own name to all who might care to read it.
As he sauntered out at the dinner hour he wished that Ben could be watching him. The Bartell house was in Ninth Street, less than a long block from his hotel, a broad, plain-fronted, three-story house of red brick trimmed with white marble. Caught in a little eddy from the stream heading in Washington Square and sweeping north, it had kept an old-time air of dignity and comfort. Ewing observed a cheering glow through the muslin curtains at the windows as he ascended the three marble steps. The old white door, crowned with a fanlight and retaining its brass knocker, had suffered the indignity of an electric bell, but this was obscurely placed at the side, and he lifted the knocker's lion head. As no bell rang, he dropped it, and was dismayed by its metallic clamor. He swiftly meditated flight, thinking to return for a seemlier demonstration. But the door swung back and a person in evening dress stood aside to bow him in.
"Ah, good evening!" exclaimed Ewing cordially. Then, embarrassed, he felt for a card, recalling that he was in a land where, probably, one could not be cordial to persons who opened doors.
"For Mrs. Laithe," he said, in grave tones, eying the man's bluntly cut features with a severity meant to dispel any wrong impression. The person received the card on a tiny silver plate, relieved him of hat and coat with what seemed to Ewing an uncanny deftness, bowed him to the gloom of a large apartment on the left, and vanished. An instant later he reappeared, drew portiéres aside, revealing another warmly lighted room, and Ewing beheld a white vision of his hostess.
"I'm glad to have a word with you," she began. "Sit here. You're to meet a friend, Ned Piersoll, who will tell you a lot of things. I telephoned him directly I came in, and he found he could come, though he must run when he's eaten—some affair with his mother. But he'll have found out about you."
"I'm much obliged to you," he stammered, having caught little of her speech.
"Ned will tell you what to do. He knows everybody. He's on the staff of the Knickerbocker magazine, and he had a novel out last spring, 'The Promotion of Fools,' that you must have seen advertised everywhere, like a medicine."