The man in the rough clothes, which sat so ill upon him, knew that these men would leave that hall feeling they had wasted a leisure that might have been given up to their own particular pastimes.
The meeting lasted over two hours, but the man at the back of the hall left long before its close. He had heard all he wanted to hear, and felt it was sufficient for his purpose.
He drove back to his hotel in a handsome automobile, in which his clothes looked still more out of place. This was quickly remedied, however, and, when once more he emerged from the building, he was clad as befitted the sixty-horsepower vehicle which he re-entered.
Frank had returned to his room at the Algonquin Hotel. He was tired, and a shadow of dissatisfaction clouded his blue eyes as he scanned the bundle of manuscript lying in his lap.
He was going over his speech, the speech he had made that night to the railroad men of Calford. He knew he had not "made good," and was seeking the weak spots in the written manuscript. But he could not detect them.
It never occurred to him that his weakness lay in the fact of that manuscript. He had written his speech because he felt it was an important occasion. Austin Leyburn had impressed its importance upon him. He had written it and learned it by heart, and the result had been—failure. Of the latter he was convinced, in spite of assurances to the contrary by his comrades on the platform, For the rest the significance of his failure had passed him by.
Yes, it was no use shirking the point. He had failed. He threw the manuscript upon his dressing bureau, and abandoned himself to the unpleasant reflections the knowledge brought.
It was nearly midnight when a bell-boy knocked at his door. A man, he said, was waiting below, and wished to see him. He handed him a card.
Frank took it and glanced at it indifferently. Then his indifference passed, and his eyes lit with a peculiar expression. The boy waited.
"Alexander Hendrie," he read.