"My dear Thorp, I want to play the game. I'm sure it's one worthy of my best attention."
We argued it out for an hour or more, but Indiman was not to be moved from his position. So it came back to his original proposition. I was to take up the search on the outside for the Lady Allegra, and Indiman was to hold the fort at Nos. 13-15 Barowsky Chambers. I rose to go.
"You don't need these, do you?" he asked, a little doubtfully, picking up one of the phonographic cylinders. I shook my head. As though I could have forgotten the smallest inflection of that voice! So we parted.
It had resolved itself into the needle in a hay-stack, after all. Where was I to look and for what? A voice! "Vox et preterea nihil," to quote again that beloved Vergilian line. To the unprejudiced mind it would seem hopeless enough, and yet I never doubted for an instant but that I should find her. If a man is sure that the world holds the one woman intended for him he may be equally confident that their paths will somewhere, somehow, sometime intersect.
It was the middle of the musical season, and I attended everything from grand opera to music-hall. For the first and most obvious procedure was to assume that the Lady Allegra was a professional singer. Either that or in the very front rank of amateurs. As to the latter, I had always been more or less in with the musical set, and I knew of no one who came within a mile of filling my bill of particulars.
A professional, then, but not necessarily high up on the ladder. Merit may wait a long time for its due recognition. So I did not despise the humble field of vaudeville and of the continuous performance houses.
Week after week passed without result, and it was now the 1st of March. I saw Indiman every few days and the game dragged equally with him. Chivers had called half a dozen times, and was now openly negotiating for the possession of the phonographic cylinders. But Indiman fenced skilfully and kept him hanging on.
One night I was strolling through East Houston Street. A transparency caught my eye. It announced that a performance of high-class vaudeville was in progress. I paid my dime and entered.
A long, low-studded room, dim with tobacco-smoke and redolent of stale beer. At the far end a small stage with faded red hangings. The card read No. 7, and the programme informed me that the turn was "A Bouquet of Ballads." A slight, fair-haired girl appeared on the stage. Her cheeks were burning, and she kept her eyes fixed on the floor. The piano jangled, and she began her song, Schubert's "Linden-Tree." Her voice shook and quavered as she went on, but I knew it. I had found the Lady Allegra.
The audience listened indifferently. This sort of thing did not appeal to East Houston Street sensibilities, and there was no applause at the end. The girl essayed a few bars of her second number, a popular air in trivial waltz time, but with even poorer success. Then she broke down altogether and retired distressfully. Cat-calls and jeers, of course.