“Peter,” she said, curiously quiet, “if you think it fair to follow me into a public place, if you really mean to make another hideous scene, you will have to come into the dining-room to do it.”
He reached out, caught her arm. She wrenched away and left him there. For a long moment he stared out the window at the rush of early evening traffic on the Avenue, his hands clenched at his sides. Then he hurried past the office and down to the street.
He stood on the curb and addressed a rattling autobus. “It is unbearable—unbelievable. The girl has lost all sense of the fitness of things. She is beside herself. I must act—act! I must act at once—to-night!”
People were passing. He turned, suddenly aware of the bustlingly unsympathetic, world about him. Had any one heard his voice? Apparently none had. All were hurrying on, up-town, down-town. Standing there on the curb he could see in at the basement window. Sumner Smith was alone at last and deep in Le Sourire. Hy had drifted away—back to the bar, doubtless.
Peter, you recall, was a genius. As a genius he fed on his emotional reactions; they were his life. Therefore do not judge him too harshly for the wild thought that at this point rushed over his consciousness with a force that left him breathless. He was frightened and by himself. But there was a barbarous exaltation in his fear. “It'll bring her to her senses,” he thought. “I've got to do it. Then she'll listen to me. She'll have to listen to me then.”
Peter appeared in the corner room down-stairs, almost as curiously quiet as Sue had been in their brief talk. He, too, was rather pale. He came over to Sumner Smith's table, dropped down opposite the fat journalist, beckoned a waiter, ordered a light dinner, and, that done, proffered a cigarette.
“I've got a tip for you, Smith,” he said, “a real one. If The Evening Earth hasn't lost its vigor you can put it over big.”
The fat man merely lighted his cigarette and looked inscrutably over it at Peter's drawn face.
“I can't give you the details. You'll have to take my word for them. Did you ever hear a question raised regarding the Reverend Doctor Wilde?” Sumner Smith glanced out toward the bar and Hy. The corners of his mouth twitched. “His boss?”
“Right. Editor of My Brother's Keeper. Author of the famous missionary sermons.”