As the car came under the big electric sign reading "Gonfaroni's" it shone up there in the heavens like a lighthouse to a homecoming mariner, and he blithely stepped off and hastened down the side street to the entrance of MacDougall Alley. It was dark, chill and deserted. Lights shone through the cracks of one window at the far end, but the studio which was his Mecca was rayless.
Jimmy stood for a long time in front of it, staring up at its darkened windows, and derided himself for his pangs of disappointment.
"This can't go on any longer," he told himself, savagely. "To-morrow I've just got to know Mary Allen's real name. I'm a big enough man now—prospectively at least—to dare to walk into that Martha Putnam hotel, glare at the ogress who guards the pearly gates, and tell her to send my card up to Miss So-and-so and to step lively. Here I am, just bubbling over with glad news like a tin tea kettle on a red hot stove spouting steam, and I can't go uptown to that hotel and send up my card because I've never had the courage to ask her real name. I've been a coward all along, but now it's got to stop."
Nevertheless he did return to the uptown precincts and for a long time stood guard in front of the distinguished woman's caravanserai, hoping against all common sense that Mary Allen might appear. He remembered reading an article in a Sunday newspaper on telepathy, and stood across the street frowning at the Martha Putnam and concentrating his mind on the object of his adoration, and beseeching her to come to the elevator, and thence down into the cold street in response to his great desire. But somehow the telepathy stuff didn't work at all according to propaganda. He shut his eyes and tried more earnestly until aroused by a voice. "Hey! You can't sleep in that doorway. Move on! Wiggle your stumps!"
A fat policeman stood regarding him. Jimmy was discouraged, for he knew that any policeman, anywhere, is an unfeeling wretch, who, if he met the great god Cupid on the street, would promptly arrest that light of the world for indecent exposure and perhaps carry him to the nearest station by the tips of his golden wings as if he were but a vagrant chicken destined for the sergeant's pot.
"Come! Fade away!" the enemy ordered, belligerently.
And Mr. James Gollop, crestfallen, faded.
CHAPTER XIV
At exactly three-thirty o'clock on the following day in the Engineers' Club the taciturn Mr. Martin, after some further questioning, took from his pocket a contract and duplicate that assured Mr. James Gollop employment.