“I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8.”
The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an arc light down the frolicsome way.
Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and laughing gleefully to himself. “‘Front,’” he chanted under his breath; “‘front’ does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and children—forgeries, water-and-salt lies—how they all take it in!”
An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk at Morley’s side.
“Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you know anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and I’ve come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I done with his street and number.”
“I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in them. “You had better apply to the police.”
“The police!” said the old man. “I ain’t done nothin’ to call in the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could”—
“I told you I did not,” said Morley, coldly. “I know no one by the name of Smithers, and I advise you to”—
“Smothers not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. “A heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth out, about five foot”—
“Oh, ‘Smothers!’” exclaimed Morley. “Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in the next house to me. I thought you said ‘Smithers.’”