“It’s no good!” said Conrad Green. “In the first place, it takes too many people, all those policemen and everybody.”
“Why, all you need is two policemen and the man and his wife. And wait till I tell you the rest of it.”
“I don’t like it; it’s no good. Come back again when you’ve got something.”
When Blair had gone Green turned to Lewis.
“That’s all for just now,” he said, “but on your way out tell Miss Jackson to get a hold of Martin and say I want him to drop in here as soon as he can.”
“What Martin?” asked Lewis.
“She’ll know—Joe Martin, the man that writes most of our librettos.”
Alone, Conrad Green crossed the room to his safe, opened it, and took out a box on which was inscribed the name of a Philadelphia jeweler. From the box he removed a beautiful rope of matched pearls and was gazing at them in admiration when Miss Jackson came in; whereupon he hastily replaced them in their case and closed the safe.
“That man is here again,” said Miss Jackson, “That man Hawley from Gay New York.”
“Tell him I’m not in.”
“I did, but he says he saw you come in and he’s going to wait till you’ll talk to him. Really, Mr. Green, I think it would be best in the long run to see him. He’s awfully persistent.”
“All right; send him in,” said Green, impatiently, “though I have no idea what he can possibly want of me.”
Mr. Hawley, dapper and eternally smiling, insisted on shaking hands with his unwilling host, who had again sat down at his desk.
“I think,” he said, “we’ve met before.”
“Not that I know of,” Green replied shortly.
“Well, it makes no difference, but I’m sure you’ve read our little paper, Gay New York.”
“No,” said Green. “All I have time to read is manuscripts.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” said Hawley. “It’s really a growing paper, with a big New York circulation, and a circulation that is important from your standpoint.”
“Are you soliciting subscriptions?” asked Green.
“No. Advertising.”
“Well, frankly, Mr. Hawley, I don’t believe I need any advertising. I believe that even the advertising I put in the regular daily papers is a waste of money.”
“Just the same,” said Hawley, “I think you’d be making a mistake not to take a page in Gay New York. It’s only a matter of fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Fifteen hundred dollars! That’s a joke! Nobody’s going to hold me up!”
“Nobody’s trying to, Mr. Green. But I might as well tell you that one of our reporters came in with a story the other day—well, it was about a little gambling affair in which some of the losers sort of forgot to settle, and—well, my partner was all for printing it, but I said I had always felt friendly toward you and why not give you a chance to state your side of it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If your reporter has got my name mixed up in a gambling story he’s crazy.”
“No. He’s perfectly sane and very, very careful. We make a specialty of careful reporters and we’re always sure of our facts.”
Conrad Green was silent for a long, long time. Then he said:
“I tell you, I don’t know what gambling business you refer to, and, furthermore, fifteen hundred dollars is a hell of a price for a page in a paper like yours. But still, as you say, you’ve got the kind of circulation that might do me good. So if you’ll cut down the price—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Green, but we never do that.”
“Well, then, of course you’ll have to give me a few days to get my ad fixed up. Say you come back here next Monday afternoon.”
“That’s perfectly satisfactory, Mr. Green,” said Hawley, “and I assure you that you’re not making a mistake. And now I won’t keep you any longer from your work.”
He extended his hand, but it was ignored, and he went out, his smile a little broader than when he had come in. Green remained at his desk, staring straight ahead of him and making semi-audible references to certain kinds of dogs as well as personages referred to in the Old and New Testaments. He was interrupted by the entrance of Lewis.
“Mr. Green,” said the new secretary, “I have found a check for forty-five dollars, made out to Herman Plant. I imagine it is for his final week’s pay. Would you like to have me change it and make it out to his widow?”
“Yes,” said Green. “But no; wait a minute. Tear it up and I’ll make out my personal check to her and add something to it.”
“All right,” said Lewis, and left.
“Forty-five dollars’ worth of flowers,” said Green to himself, and smiled for the first time that morning.
He looked at his watch and got up and put on his beautiful hat.
“I’m going to lunch,” he told Miss Jackson on his way through the outer office. “If Peebles or anybody important calls up, tell them I’ll be here all afternoon.”
“You’re not forgetting Mr. Plant’s funeral?”
“Oh, that’s right. Well, I’ll be here from one thirty to about three.”
A head waiter at the Astor bowed to him obsequiously and escorted him to a table near a window, while the occupants of several other tables gazed at him spellbound and whispered, “Conrad Green.”
A luncheon of clams, sweetbreads, spinach, strawberry ice cream, and small coffee seemed to satisfy him. He signed his check and then tipped his own waiter and the head waiter a dollar apiece, the two tips falling just short of the cost of the meal.
Joe Martin, his chief librettist, was waiting when he got back to his office.
“Oh, hello, Joe!” he said, cordially. “Come right inside. I think I’ve got something for you.”
Martin followed him in and sat down without waiting for an invitation. Green seated himself at his desk and drew out his cigarette case.
“Have one,
