"Burt Brainard. Just kick that valise out of the way if you want to."
"All alone?"
"Hope. Girl with him. One of the Clifton type-writers—the one who used to be down in the lunch-room."
"Healie McNabb?"
"U'm h'm."
[XI]
McDowell's second check to Vibert proved good on the opening of business next morning. It was paid in the usual mechanical and impersonal fashion that gives no possible clue to the amount of the balance remaining after; but paid it was, all the same, and Vibert's anticipated opportunity for further invective—an opportunity which he considered quite possible, and would have been by no means sorry to embrace—came to naught.
McDowell's friendly intimation that St. Asaph's might presently dispense with Vibert's services was soon found to have as solid a backing as his signature. Within less than a fortnight Vibert was dismissed, though on grounds not altogether the same as those that McDowell had figured upon.
If Vibert, after descending to the ground floor, had immediately crossed the great court of the Clifton instead of lingering there for a moment, the outcome might have been quite different. But he paused in the midst of its mosaicked expanse to pull out the check from his pocket and to take another look at it. He projected his vision so far into the future as the next forenoon, and saw the check again rejected—this time by the teller of the Highflyers'—by reason of "no account," or perhaps by reason of "no funds." He dramatized a precipitous visit to McDowell's office, and improvised the scene of denunciation and vigorous action that was to accompany it.