"Wait," he told the driver, on alighting at the Monastery; "I'm keeping you."
Money passed between them—more than enough to render his wishes inviolable.
A dull-eyed hallboy recognised and let him in, sullenly passing him on to the elevator; but as that last was on the point of taking flight to Peter Kenny's door, it hesitated; and the operator, with his hand on the half-closed gate, shot it open again instead of shut.
A Western Union messenger-boy, not over forty years tired, was being admitted at the street door. The colloquy there was distinctly audible:
"Mr. Bayard Shaynon?"
"'Leventh floor. Hurry up—don't keep the elevator waitin'."
"Ah—ferget it!"
Whistling softly, the man with the yellow envelope ambled nonchalantly into the cage; fixed the operator with a truculent stare, and demanded the eleventh floor.
Now Peter Kenny's rooms were on the twelfth....
The telegram with its sprawling endorsement in ink, "Mr. Bayard Shaynon, Monastery Apartments," was for several moments within two feet of P. Sybarite's nose.