Then, in his taxi, he veered over to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, where he bought roses and a spray of orchids. Then, adding to his purchases a huge box of bon-bons, he set his course for the three story and basement house which he had sold to Palla Dumont.
CHAPTER VII
Shotwell Senior and his wife were dining out that evening.
Shotwell Junior had no plans––or admitted none, even to himself. He got into a bath and later into a dinner jacket, in an absent-minded way, and finally sauntered into the library wearing a vague scowl.
The weather had turned colder, and there was an open fire there, and a convenient armchair and the evening papers.
Perhaps the young gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the inoffensive Evening Post.
Before any open fire any young man ought to be able to make up whatever mind he chances to possess. Yet, what to do with a winter evening all his own seemed to him a problem unfathomable.
Perhaps his difficulty lay only in selection––there are so many agreeable things for a young man to do in Gotham Town on a winter’s evening.
But, oddly enough, young Shotwell was trying to persuade himself that he had no choice of occupation for the evening; that he really didn’t care. Yet, always two intrusive alternatives continually presented themselves. The one was to change his coat for a spike-tail, his black tie for a white one, and go to the Metropolitan 84 Opera. The other and more attractive alternative was not to go.