Frank sat down again at the table, and resumed his figuring on dimensions and estimates. The result seemed to please him. A great many thoughts flashed through his active mind.
“I’ll do it!” he exclaimed at last, rising to his feet and putting on his hat. “I’ll send the telegram, so there may be no delay. I don’t know how Professor Barrington may take it—perhaps Mr. Strapp may not come into my ideas; but I feel I’m right and I’m going ahead on my own hook.”
Frank went downstairs and wrote out and dispatched a telegram to New York City. It was addressed to Mr. Hank Strapp at the Empire photo playhouse. Then Frank went out to the Common, after making sure that no lurking spy was watching him. When he arrived at the stationery shop he dodged in quickly.
It was nearly half an hour later when he reappeared. Thoughtfulness had given place to a buoyant, confident manner. Frank snapped his fingers briskly, and hurried back to the hotel as if he had taken a definite stand on the subject of his recent cogitations, and had done something final regarding it.
“I don’t care much if a dozen Slavins are watching me now,” he soliloquized. “I’ve blocked their game for certain.”
Frank was first impatient, then amazed and finally anxious as six o’clock arrived and no word came from his absent friend. His early suspicions took a more definite form. He finally went downstairs again and asked the hotel clerk the location of Burdell Row. He found it to be about four miles distant, but a street car would take him there. By this time Frank was worried. It was strange, he thought, that the professor should remain away so long when his mind was so set on the leases they had under consideration.
Within an hour Frank reached Burdell Row. It was a narrow, crooked thoroughfare in a poor section of the city, and lined with cheap stores. Frank came to No. 22 to find it a low, rickety building occupied by an ice cream parlor.
The proprietor, a coarse featured, shabbily dressed man, was the only person visible through the grimy front windows. Frank entered the place and was about to question the man when, glancing past the straggly strings of curtains festooning the archway leading to the back room, he descried a familiar form at a table. It was Professor Barrington.
“I came about that gentleman,” said Frank, going straight into the rear room. “Why, he is asleep.”
The professor sat in a chair, his eyes closed and his head leaning over. Frank went up to him and seized his arm and shook it.