Over all brooded still that effect of illusion: this might have been,
almost, a foreign city into whose streets he was adventuring for the
first time, so changed and strange seemed everything in his eyes.
P. Sybarite himself felt old and worn and tired, and with a thoughtful
finger rubbed an over-night growth of stubble upon his chin....
"Wait," he told the driver, on alighting at the Monastery; "I'm
keeping you."
Money passed between them--more than enough to render his wishes
inviolable.
A dull-eyed hallboy recognised and let him in, sullenly passing him on
to the elevator; but as that last was on the point of taking flight to
Peter Kenny's door, it hesitated; and the operator, with his hand on
the half-closed gate, shot it open again instead of shut.
A Western Union messenger-boy, not over forty years tired, was being
admitted at the street door. The colloquy there was distinctly
audible:
"Mr. Bayard Shaynon?"
"'Leventh floor. Hurry up--don't keep the elevator waitin'."
"Ah--ferget it!"
Whistling softly, the man with the yellow envelope ambled nonchalantly
into the cage; fixed the operator with a truculent stare, and demanded
the eleventh floor.
Now Peter Kenny's rooms were on the twelfth....
The telegram with its sprawling endorsement in ink, "_Mr. Bayard
Shaynon, Monastery Apartments_," was for several moments within two
feet of P.
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