"Oh, Lord!" he interrupted sharply. "That's enough of such devilish detail!—— I beg your pardon, but such things—annoy me. Also I've some business that's waiting—or pleasure, whichever you choose to call it——" He glanced at his watch, thinking of the exhibition at Christensen's, and the several rival and hawk-like amateurs who certainly would be prowling around there, deriding him for his absence and looking for loot.
"Where does that child live?" he added carelessly, buttoning his overcoat.
The capable young woman, who had been regarding him with suppressed amusement, wrote out the address on a pad, tore off the leaf, and handed it to him.
"—In case you ever become curious to see little Stephanie Quest, whom you have aided so generously——" she explained.
Cleland, recollecting with increasing annoyance that he had three hundred dollars less to waste on Christensen than he had that morning, muttered the polite formality of leave-taking required of him, and bowed himself out, carrying the slip of paper in his gloved fingers, extended as though he were looking for a place to drop it.
Down in the street, where his car stood, the sidewalks were slowly whitening under leisurely falling snowflakes. The asphalt already was a slippery mess.
"Where's that!" he demanded peevishly, shoving the slip of paper at his chauffeur. "Do you know?"
"I can find it, sir."
"All right," snapped John Cleland.
He stepped into the little limousine and settled back with a grunt. Then he hunched himself up in the corner and perked the fur robe over his knees, muttering. Thoughts of his wife, of his son, had been heavily persistent that morning. Never before had he felt actually old—he was only fifty-odd. Never before had he felt himself so alone, so utterly solitary. Never had he so needed the comradeship of his only son.