"God damn you—you should have waked me up. I feel horrible."
"Snap out of it! Try to remember what the poet says about rags, bones, hanks of hair—and a good cigar is a smoke." His eyes were so wild that I took pity on him. "Jump in the shower. I've got Dave Berne—an old pal of mine—working on your Marcia. He probably has detectives on the hunt this minute."
Paul heavily rubbed the stubble on his face. "I thought you'd take charge."
While he used my shower and my razor I had his clothes pressed and ordered some breakfast for him.
But he ate the food only because he had to wait for the valet. I couldn't remember having seen anybody in such a tizzy about a girl since the days of my youth—since my own tizzies. And tizzy wasn't the right word for Paul's condition. It was pretty nearly psychopathic.
He ate and ran from my rooms, after I'd made him promise to report back later in the day.
I got into the serial again and the sun moved across the blue-hot sky, driving from Manhattan everybody with the fare.
Ambulances were collecting prostration cases.
Cops were going around shutting off the fire hydrants which wilted citizens were opening with wrenches. Cops trying to save the water supply against fall drought, against fires, against winter snow that could be flushed into the sewers, and in behalf of the thirst, cookery, and cleanliness of the millions.