Lockyer gave him a hearty handclasp, made a few phrases about good wishes and the like, left him alone.  The general opinion was that Norman was done for.  But Lockyer could not see it.  He had seen too many men fall only to rise out of lowest depths to greater heights than they had fallen from.  And Norman was only thirty-seven.  Perhaps this would prove to be merely a dip in a securely brilliant career and not a fall at all.  In that case—­with such a brain, such a genius for the lawlessness of the law, what a laughing on the other side of the mouth there might yet be among young Norman’s enemies—­and friends!

He spent most of the next few days—­the lunch time, the late afternoon, finally the early morning hours—­lurking about the Equitable Building, in which were the offices of Pytchley and Culver.  As that building had entrances on four streets, the best he could do was to walk round and round, with an occasional excursion through the corridors and past the elevators.  He had written her, asking to see her; he had got no answer.  He ceased to wait at the elevators after he had twice narrowly escaped being seen by Tetlow.  He was indifferent to Tetlow, except as meeting him might make it harder to see Dorothy.  He drank hard.  But drink never affected him except to make him more grimly tenacious in whatever he had deliberately and soberly resolved.  Drink did not explain—­neither wholly nor in any part—­this conduct of his.  It, and the more erratic vagaries to follow, will seem incredible conduct for a man of Norman’s character and position to feeble folk with their feeble desires, their dread of criticism and ridicule, their exaggerated and adoring notions of the master men.  In fact, it was the natural outcome of the man’s nature—­arrogant, contemptuous of his fellowmen and of their opinions, and, like all the master men, capable of such concentration upon a desire that he would adopt any means, high or low, dignified or the reverse, if only it promised to further his end.  Fred Norman, at these vulgar vigils, took the measure of his own self-abasement to a hair’s breadth.  But he kept on, with the fever of his infatuation burning like a delirium, burning higher and deeper with each baffled day.

At noon, one day, as he swung into Broadway from Cedar street, he ran straight into Tetlow.  It was raining and his umbrella caught in Tetlow’s.  It was a ludicrous situation, but there was no answering smile in his former friend’s eyes.  Tetlow glowered.

“I’ve heard you were hanging about,” he said.  “How low you have sunk!”

Norman laughed in his face.  “Poor Tetlow,” he said.  “I never expected to see you develop into a crusader.  And what a Don Quixote you look.  Cheer up, old man.  Don’t take it so hard.”

“I warn you to keep away from her,” said Tetlow in subdued, tense tones, his fat face quivering with emotion.  “Hasn’t she shown you plainly that she’ll have nothing to do with you?”