"No, sir!" said Sam. "I'll take you up to look, if you like. And about
an hour ago he sent a boy here with a note, to get some of his clothes.
The young lady at the desk was out at the movies at the time."

"I was getting my supper, Sam."

Willy Cameron had gone very white.

"Did the boy say where he was taking the things?"

"To the Saint Elmo Hotel, sir."

On the street again Willy Cameron took himself fiercely in hand. There
were a half-dozen reasons why Akers might go to the Saint Elmo. He
might, for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron, would go back to
the Benedict. He might be hiding from Dan, or from reporters. But there
had been, apparently, no attempt to keep his new quarters secret. If
Lily was at the Saint Elmo--

He found a taxicab, and as it drew up at the curb before the hotel he
saw the Cardew car moving away. It gave him his first real breath for
twenty minutes. Lily was not there.

But Louis Akers was. He got his room number from a clerk and went up,
still determinedly holding on to himself. Afterwards he had no clear
recollection of any interval between the Benedict and the moment he
found himself standing outside a door on an upper floor of the Saint
Elmo. From that time on it was as clear as crystal, his own sudden calm,
the overturning of a chair inside, a man's voice, slightly raised, which
he recognized, and then the thin crash of a wineglass dropped or thrown
to the floor.

He opened the door and went in.

In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the
remains of a dinner for two. Akers was standing by the table, his chair
overturned behind him, a splintered glass at his feet, staring angrily
at the window. Even then Willy Cameron saw that he had had too much to
drink, and that he was in an ugly mood. He was in dinner clothes, but
with his bruised face and scowling brows he looked a sinister imitation
of a gentleman.

By the window, her back to the room, was Lily.

Neither of them glanced at the door. Evidently the waiter had been
moving in and out, and Akers considered him as little as he would a dog.

"Come and sit down," he said angrily. "I've quit drinking, I tell you.
Good God, just because I've had a little wine--and I had the hell of a
time getting it--you won't eat and won't talk. Come here."

"I'm not hungry."

"Come here."

"Stay where you are, Lily," said Willy Cameron, from inside the closed
door. "Or perhaps you'd better get your wraps. I came