“I say I will be touting for no restaurant,” I repeated, loudly. “You are subject to my will, and I declare that you shall not appear of record this evening until the time arrives for you to rescue Miss Ffolliott again. If the reading public cannot conceive that you have dined during that interval at some one of the thousands of establishments provided for that purpose that do not receive literary advertisement it may suppose, for aught I care, that you have gone fasting.”
“Thank you,” said Van Sweller, rather coolly, “you are hardly courteous. But take care! it is at your own risk that you attempt to disregard a fundamental principle in metropolitan fiction—one that is dear alike to author and reader. I shall, of course attend to my duty when it comes time to rescue your heroine; but I warn you that it will be your loss if you fail to send me to-night to dine at –––– [8].”
“I will take the consequences if there are to be any,” I replied. “I am not yet come to be sandwich man for an eating-house.”
I walked over to a table where I had left my cane and gloves. I heard the whirr of the alarm in the cab below and I turned quickly. Van Sweller was gone.
I rushed down the stairs and out to the curb. An empty hansom was just passing. I hailed the driver excitedly.
“See that auto cab halfway down the block?” I shouted. “Follow it. Don’t lose sight of it for an instant, and I will give you two dollars!”
If I only had been one of the characters in my story instead of myself I could easily have offered $10 or $25 or even $100. But $2 was all I felt justified in expending, with fiction at its present rates.
The cab driver, instead of lashing his animal into a foam, proceeded at a deliberate trot that suggested a by-the-hour arrangement.
But I suspected Van Sweller’s design; and when we lost sight of his cab I ordered my driver to proceed at once to –––– [9].
I found Van Sweller at a table under a palm, just glancing over the menu, with a hopeful waiter hovering at his elbow.