He didn’t believe for an instant that she had meant to run away with the Cadogan collar; and he hoped fervently that she hadn’t been involved in any serious trouble by the qualified thing. Furthermore, he candidly wished he might be permitted to help extricate her, if she were really tangled up in any unpleasantness.
Such, at all events, was the general tone of his meditations throughout dinner and his homeward stroll down Fifth Avenue from Forty-fourth Street, a stroll in which he cast himself for the part of the misprized hero; and made himself look it to the life by sticking his hands in his pockets, carrying his cane at a despondent angle beneath one arm, resting his chin on his chest—or as nearly there as was practicable, if he cared to escape being strangled by his collar—and permitting a cigarette to dangle dejectedly from his lips....
He arrived in front of his lodgings at nine o’clock or something later. And as he started up the brownstone stoop he became aware of a disconsolate little figure hunched up on the topmost step; which was Mr. Iff.
The little man had his chin in his hands and his hat pulled down over his eyes. He rose as Staff came up the steps and gave him good evening in a spiritless tone which he promptly remedied by the acid observation:
“It’s a pity you wouldn’t try to be home when I call. Here you’ve kept me waiting the best part of an hour.”
“Sorry,” said Staff gravely; “but why stand on ceremony at this late day? My bedroom windows are still open; I left ’em so, fancying you might prefer to come in that way.”
“It’s a pity,” commented Iff, following him upstairs, “you can’t do something for that oratorical weakness of yours. Ever try choking it down? Or would that make you ill?”
With which he seemed content to abandon persiflage, satisfied that his average for acerbity was still high. “Besides,” he said peaceably, “I’m all dressed up pretty now, and it doesn’t look right for a respectable member of society to be pulling off second-story man stunts.”
Staff led him into the study, turned on the lights, then looked his guest over.
So far as his person was involved, it was evident that Iff had employed Staff’s American money to advantage. He wore, with the look of one fresh from thorough grooming at a Turkish bath, a new suit of dark clothes. But when he had thrown aside his soft felt hat, his face showed drawn, pinched and haggard, the face of a man whose sufferings are of the spirit rather than of the body. Loss of sleep might have accounted in part for that expression, but not for all of it.