"Where can I find him?"
The man turned towards the elevators; one had just that minute come down. "Chicago!" its youthful conductor had called with an airy drawl.
"Pete," said his superior; "a tall, dark man who's been standing around here." He threw his thumb over towards the girl, to indicate that the inquiry was hers. "Had on a soft brown hat."
"Yes, I seen him," said the boy. "Used to be in one of them insurance offices, didn't he? Vibert—was that his name?"
"Vi—?"
"Vibert," said the man, impatiently. "Come, come, don't block the way—sev-en!" he cried, in his professional tone, and the boy at once slammed his door to and started roofwards.
The man retired into himself with a resumption of his air of idle dignity. The girl, at a short remove, stood looking at him with an anxious face. She made a timid attempt to approach him again and presently stole away.
Vibert was followed down from McDowell's office, in the course of half an hour, by Ogden. McDowell's dissertation on tax matters, with its pointed presentation of extreme cases, had left him, as we have seen, in a state more or less stirred up; and it had occurred to him that if he were to stop on the way down he might find some legal sedative in the office of Freeze & Freeze. But the hour was now rather late; Freeze & Freeze were being locked up by the last of their junior clerks; and Ogden was left to ramble through the corridors in a confused and disconsolate state.
He was presently accosted by a young woman, who appeared to be roaming through the building in a state even more dazed and forlorn than his own. She approached him with appeal so plainly written on her features that his hand went instinctively to his pocket for the ready dime. He was used to addresses of this sort; Brower had told him many times that he was a "soft mark." He soon ascertained, however, that what she wanted was not alms, but information—an appeal which is more familiar still in the great down-town buildings; it comes frequently enough from simple, inexperienced creatures who know what they want, but not at all how to get it.
The girl thrust back a straggling lock and gave him a glance both wild and timid.