"I know you're not mean, Griff; that's why I told you."
"Oh, I'll tell you, too. I was mean once; I didn't mean to be, but it turned out that way." He was on the point of admitting something to me that I felt if I was to depend upon him I shouldn't hear.
I got out as early as possible and walked until I found a billboard. Eversley was at the Playhouse; he had been playing here for three days. I walked past it several times considering the possibility of getting his address from the stage doorman, though I knew I couldn't.
It was clear and bright, few people moved in the street. I walked between the alleyways and a row of ash-cans waiting for the belated carts of the cleaners. "Eversley, Eversley!" I called over and over as if it had been a charm. Suddenly in the still cold brightness, a torn fragment of newspaper flapped in the ash-can, it lifted and made a clumsy flight like a half-fledged bird and dropped beside me. Its one torn wing flapped gently as I passed it, and showed me part of a pictured face. I said to myself that I was in a pretty state when even a torn face in a paper looked like Eversley. I had gone on three steps, and suddenly I stopped. It was Eversley, of course; his picture would be in the papers. I went back and lifted the printed scrap. It was part of an interview with the great tragedian, three days old, and it told me the address of his hotel.
It was nearly eleven when I arrived there. The foyer was crowded with people among whom I fancied I recognized several of my profession. They had the same desperate air that I knew must stand out on me. I thought the clerk recognized it.
"Mr. Eversley is not in this morning," I was told. They pretended, too, not to know when he would be in. I understood that this meant that he was in, but probably asleep or breakfasting. I found a chair close to one of the elevators and waited. The room was warm and I was faint. I do not know how long I sat there; I must have been almost unconscious. Suddenly I snapped alert. There was Eversley and two or three others stepping into the elevator on the opposite side of the room. I was too late of course to catch them.
"Mr. Eversley's apartments," I said to the elevator boy.
"First turn to the left," he told me when he had let me out on the fourth floor. I was afraid to ask the number of the room lest he should suspect me of intruding. There were five or six doors down the left corridor. I knocked at one at a hazard, and was rejected by a large woman in deshabille. I was discouraged; somehow the prospect of knocking at every one of those doors and inquiring for Mr. Eversley daunted me. I was dividing between my dread of that and a still greater dread, if I should be found loitering too long in the corridor, of being taken for a suspicious person. In a few moments, however, a woman came out of one of the doors farthest down and moved toward me. I thought it was she I had seen getting into the elevator with Mr. Eversley; she had the gracious air of women who know themselves relied upon. She stopped, hypnotized by my evident wish to speak to her.
"Mrs. Eversley?" She acknowledged it. "I am trying to find your husband; I have his permission," I interpolated as I saw her pleasant, open countenance close upon me. I learned afterward how much of her life went to saving him the strain of publicity, and I did not blame her.
"My husband never sees visitors in the morning."