It seems to the staid old business bulwark from the West as if he had been sitting there for hours, when suddenly the electric bell rings.
Both jump to their feet.
“What is it?” he asks in a low voice.
“I don’t know; I can’t think,” she answers, holding her hand to her head. “Perhaps it’s Jack. My God, if it should be Jack. He will kill you if he finds you here. I could never explain it. Take your hat and coat quick. Here, this way, the back door, and run, run as fast as you can. Don’t stop, please, until you get to your hotel. Go, go, at once.”
With hat and coat in hand he finds himself pushed out in a dark passageway. He gropes his way to the stairs.
A man is coming up, a man with a traveling case.
It’s Jack, as sure as you live.
Guiltily he walks down, steps hurriedly to the street door, passes out, and starts on a brisk trot up the street. At the first corner he turns, then he turns another block, then he turns again, with the instinct of a hunted hare. So he pursued his zig-zag course for many blocks, until he finally stops to ask directions.
“The Gilt-Edge Hotel? certainly; four blocks over to the avenue then about twenty down.”
He walks the four blocks while he catches his breath, and then he gets aboard a car only to find he hasn’t a cent.