"I'm disgusted with the food and the service," he complained. "I rarely find fault, but I am compelled to do so this time. The man who has been serving me seems to be a rank amateur, and twice he was almost insolent. This hotel has a reputation which it scarcely is maintaining this evening." "I'll see about it, sir," the head waiter said. Prale saw him stop the waiter and speak to him, and the waiter glared at him when he brought the demi-tasse. Prale did not care. He glared back at the man, drank the coffee, and touched the match to a cigar. Then he signed the check and went from the dining room, an angry and disgusted man. "Another thing like that, and I look for the manager," he told himself. He supposed that he was a victim of circumstances--that the waiter was a new man and that it happened that the portions he served were poor portions. His happiness at being home again prevented Sidney Prale from feeling anger for any length of time. He got his hat and coat and went out upon the street again. He had an hour before time to go to the theater. He walked over to Broadway and went toward the north, looking at the bright lights and the crowds. He passed through two or three hotel lobbies, satisfied for the time merely to be in the midst of the throngs. At the proper time, he hurried to the theater and claimed his seat. The performance was a mediocre one, but it pleased Sidney Prale. He had seen a better show in Honduras a month before, had seen better dancing and heard better singing and comedy, but this was New York! The show at an end, Prale claimed his hat and coat at the check room and walked down the street toward a cabaret restaurant. He reached into his overcoat pocket for his gloves, and his hand encountered a slip of paper. He took it out. There was the same rough handwriting on the same kind of paper, and evidently with the same blunt pencil. "Remember--retribution is sure!" "This thing ceases to be a joke!" Prale told himself. His face flushed with anger, and he turned back toward the theater. But he had been among the last to leave, and already the lights of the playhouse were being turned out. The boy in charge of the check room would be gone, Prale knew. He thought of Kate Gilbert again, and the bit of paper she had dropped as she got into the limousine down on the water front. Surely she could have no hand in this, he thought. What interest could Kate Gilbert, a casual acquaintance and reputed daughter of a wealthy house, have in him and his affairs? "Somebody is making a mistake," he declared to himself, "or else it is some sort of a new advertising dodge. If I ever catch the jokesmith who is responsible for these dainty little messages, I'll tell him a thing or two."