“Sorr!” said Officer Donahue.

“Well?”

“It came from upstairs, sorr.”

“Of course it came from upstairs.  Cassidy!”

“Sorr?”

“Get down into the street, call up the reserves, and stand at the front entrance to keep the crowd back.  We’ll have the whole city here in five minutes.”

“Right, sorr.”

“Don’t let anyone in.”

“No, sorr.”

“Well, see that you don’t.  Come along, Donahue, now.  Look slippy.”

“On the spot, sorr!” said Officer Donahue.

A moment later Archie had the studio to himself.  Two minutes later he was picking his way cautiously down the fire-escape after the manner of the recent Mr. Moon.  Archie had not seen much of Mr. Moon, but he had seen enough to know that in certain crises his methods were sound and should be followed.  Elmer Moon was not a good man; his ethics were poor and his moral code shaky; but in the matter of legging it away from a situation of peril and discomfort he had no superior.

CHAPTER VII

MR. ROSCOE SHERRIFF HAS AN IDEA

Archie inserted a fresh cigarette in his long holder and began to smoke a little moodily.  It was about a week after his disturbing adventures in J. B. Wheeler’s studio, and life had ceased for the moment to be a thing of careless enjoyment.  Mr. Wheeler, mourning over his lost home-brew and refusing, like Niobe, to be comforted, has suspended the sittings for the magazine cover, thus robbing Archie of his life-work.  Mr. Brewster had not been in genial mood of late.  And, in addition to all this, Lucille was away on a visit to a school-friend.  And when Lucille went away, she took with her the sunshine.  Archie was not surprised at her being popular and in demand among her friends, but that did not help him to become reconciled to her absence.

He gazed rather wistfully across the table at his friend, Roscoe Sherriff, the Press-agent, another of his Pen-and-Ink Club acquaintances.  They had just finished lunch, and during the meal Sherriff, who, like most men of action, was fond of hearing the sound of his own voice and liked exercising it on the subject of himself, had been telling Archie a few anecdotes about his professional past.  From these the latter had conceived a picture of Roscoe Sherriff’s life as a prismatic thing of energy and adventure and well-paid withal—­just the sort of life, in fact, which he would have enjoyed leading himself.  He wished that he, too, like the Press-agent, could go about the place “slipping things over” and “putting things across.”  Daniel Brewster, he felt, would have beamed upon a son-in-law like Roscoe Sherriff.

“The more I see of America,” sighed Archie, “the more it amazes me.  All you birds seem to have been doing things from the cradle upwards.  I wish I could do things!”

“Well, why don’t you?”