“It’s an ill-smelling muck-heap!” he frowned, recalling the incidents of the crisis at the suggestion let fall by the two outgoing lobbyists.  “And so much of this dog-watch as isn’t sickeningly demoralizing is deadly dull, as Crenshawe puts it.  If I had anywhere to go, I’d cut the galleries for to-night.”

He was returning the newspaper to his pocket when it occurred to him that his object in buying it had been to note the stock quotations; a daily duty which, for Elinor’s sake, he had never omitted.  Whereupon he reopened it and ran his eye down the lists.  There was a decided upward tendency in westerns.  Overland Short Line had gained two points; and Western Pacific——­

He held the paper under the nearest electric globe to make sure:  Western Pacific, preferred, was quoted at fifty-eight and a half, which was one point and a half above the Brentwood purchase price.

One minute later an excited life-saver was shut in the box of the public telephone, gritting his teeth at the inanity of the central operator who insisted on giving him “A-1224” instead of “A-1234,” the Hotel Wellington.

“No, no!  Can’t you understand?  I want twelve-thirty-four; one, two, three, four; the Hotel Wellington.”

There was more skirling of bells, another nerve-trying wait, and at last the clerk of the hotel answered.

“What name did you say?  Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Kent?  Ormsby?  Mr. Brookes Ormsby?  No, he isn’t here; he went out about two minutes ago.  What’s that you say? Damn?  Well, I’m sorry, too.  No message that I can take?  All right.  Good-by.”

This was the beginning.  For the middle part Kent burst out of the telephone-box and took the nearest short-cut through the capitol grounds for the street-car corner.  At a quarter of nine he was cross-questioning the clerk face to face in the lobby of the Wellington.  There was little more to be learned about Ormsby.  The club-man had left his key and gone out.  He was in evening dress, and had taken a cab at the hotel entrance.

Kent dashed across to his rooms and, in a feverish race against time, made himself fit to chase a man in evening dress.  There was no car in sight when he came down, and he, too, took a cab with an explosive order to the driver:  “124 Tejon Avenue, and be quick about it!”

It was the housemaid that answered his ring at the door of the Brentwood apartment.  She was a Swede, a recent importation; hence Kent learned nothing beyond the bare fact that the ladies had gone out.  “With Mr. Ormsby?” he asked.

“Yaas; Aye tank it vill pee dat yentlemans.”

The pursuer took the road again, rather unhopefully.  There were a dozen places where Ormsby might have taken his charges.  Among them there was the legislative reception at Portia Van Brock’s.  Kent flipped a figurative coin, and gave the order for Alameda Square.  The reception was perhaps the least unlikely place of the dozen.