She was a good natured old girl, grandmother was. She says she'll try it; but only on one condition. It was a corker, too. If she's going to give all her good friends at the actors' boardin' house the shake, she thinks it ought to be done at a farewell dinner at the swellest place in town. Vincent groans; but he has to give in. And that's how it happens the other night that about two dozen liberty people walked up from Appetite Row and fed themselves off Sherry's gold plates until the waiters was weak in the knees watchin' 'em. "Is the old lady still leadin' the band wagon, Vincent!" says I to him yesterday. "She is," says he, "and it is wonderful how young she has grown." "New York is a great place for rejuvenatin' grandmothers," says I, "specially around in the Red Ink Zone." CHAPTER V A LONG SHOT ON DELANCEY Well, I've been slummin' up again. It happens like this: I was just preparin', here the other noontime, to rush around the corner and destroy a plate of lunch counter hash decorated with parsley and a dropped egg, when I gets this 'phone call from Duke Borden, who says he wants to see me the worst way. "Well," says I, "the studio's still here on 42d-st., and if your eyesight ain't failed you----" "Oh, chop it, can't you, Shorty?" says he. "This is really important. Come right up, can't you!" "That depends," says I. "Any partic'lar place?" "Of course," says he. "Here at the club. I'm to meet Chick Sommers here in half an hour. We'll have luncheon together and----" "I'm on," says I. "I don't know Chick; but I'm a mixer, and I'll stand for anything in the food line but cold egg. Scratch the chilled hen fruit and I'm with you." Know about Duke, don't you? It ain't much to tell. He's just one of these big, handsome, overfed chappies that help the mounted traffic cops to make Fifth-ave. look different from other Main-sts. He don't do any special good, or any partic'lar harm. Duke's got just enough sense, though, to have spasms of thinkin' he wants to do something useful now and then, and all I can dope out of this emergency call of his is that this is a new thought. That's the answer, too. He begins tellin' me about it while the head waiter's leadin' us over to a corner table. Oh, yes, he's going in for business in dead earnest now, y'know,--suite of offices, his name on the letterheads, and all that sort of thing, bah Jove! All of which means that Mr. Chick Sommers, who was a star quarterback in '05, when Duke was makin' his college bluff on the Gold Coast, has rung him into a South Jersey land boomin' scheme. A few others, friends of Chick's, are in it. They're all rippin' good fellows, too, and awfully clever at planning out things. Chick himself, of course, is a corker. It was him that insisted on Duke's bein' treasurer. "And really," says Duke, "about all I have to do is drop around once or twice a week and sign a few checks." "I see," says I. "They let you supply the funds, eh?"