Despite the lively devil's deputy at elbow the appeal wavered on.
"It's a policeman coming. He'll think—" Shelby broke off his conjecture to utter some banality about the moon, to drown her invocation. Wayside prayers were no more a novelty than wayside curses in this region, and the officer rolled indifferently by. "Now go back to your hotel, and get to bed," pleaded the man, gasping like a criminal with a reprieve. "Things will look brighter in the morning. I'll be in to see you before my train leaves."
Her devotions at an end, she issued docilely to the pavement, saying,
"You can't know the comfort."
"It's a pity it isn't contagious," commented Shelby, grimly; but before they quitted the shadows for the lights of Fifth Avenue he added gently that he begrudged her nothing.
Directly he saw the elevator whisk her to her room, the man posted back to the music hall in search of Volney Sprague. What he should say to him was not clear, but see him he must. Out of the jumble of his thoughts that idea beset him like an obsession. The audience had begun to trickle into Broadway, and as the stream broadened to fill the doorway he was hard put to it to scan every face, but he persisted till the last loiterer had left. Then an attendant told him that the place had yet another exit upon another street, which, beyond all doubt, the editor had used.
Baffled, but not without resource, he turned again to the newspapers and rummaged the lists of hotel arrivals for Sprague's unnoteworthy name. Naturally too obscure for mention! Yet in the same breath it started out at him from miscellaneous political gossip as one of the day's callers at the headquarters of a local revolt against the machine. Shelby construed the visit as a still hunt for funds, and, in the light of his own financial rebound, meant to have his chuckle from it, should he ever unhorse the worry by which he was hag-rid. Consulting a city directory, he set forth on a fagging tramp from hotel to hotel—a quest barren of result for the excellent reason that Sprague, according to his custom, had registered at the Reform Club.
Late to bed, and after persistent sheep-counting, much later to sleep, Shelby woke with the morning far advanced and the hour of his departure near. It was necessary to eke out his wardrobe with a purchase or two against the journey with the governor, and between his shopping and his breakfast, the deliberate talk he had meant to have with Mrs. Hilliard bade fair to dwindle to a handshake. As the morning brought no grounds for optimism, he was not altogether sorry that the interview must be short; indeed, by daylight his own necessity seemed the more pressing; but he faced his obligations, and prepared himself for the rôle of Sturdy Oak to Mrs. Hilliard's Clinging Vine. His astonishment, therefore, was doubly great when he learned that the Vine had developed a backbone of its own, and left the hotel, bag and baggage, upward of an hour ago.
Being a practical man, Shelby promptly made friends with the baggage agent, who recalled that the "blond lady's" belongings had been forwarded to the Grand Central Station,—Shelby's own destination,—whose waiting-hall the perplexed candidate was shortly scouring in pursuit. The sequel was unexpected. He did not find Mrs. Hilliard, but he did stumble fairly into the arms of Volney Sprague.
Startled, but outwardly self-assured, he half offered his hand.
The editor gave him a perfunctory good morning, but his own right hand made no movement to free itself from the magazine whose leaves he had been turning at the news-stand.