Prale was angry again when he left the office of the manager. It seemed that everything was conspiring against his comfort. He got a cab, drove to another hotel, inspected a suite and reserved it, paying a month in advance, and then went back to the big hotel on Fifth Avenue to get his baggage. He paid his bill at the cashier's window, and overheard the room clerk speaking to a woman. "Certainly, madam," the clerk was saying. "We will have an excellent suite on the fifth floor within half an hour. The party is just vacating it. Plenty of suites on the third floor, of course, but, if you want to be up higher in the building----" Sidney Prale felt the blood pounding in his temples, felt rage welling up within him. He felt as he had once in a Honduras forest when he became aware that a dishonest foreman was betraying business secrets. He hurried to the office of the manager, but the stenographer said the manager was busy and could not be seen. Prale whirled away, going through the lobby toward the entrance. He met Kate Gilbert face to face. She did not seem to see him, though he was forced to step aside to let her pass. CHAPTER IV A FOE AND A FRIEND After settling himself in the other hotel, Prale ate a belated luncheon. For the first time that day, he looked at the newspapers. He had remembered that a New Yorker reads the papers religiously to keep up to the minute; whereas, in Honduras, it was the custom for busy men to let the papers accumulate and then read a week's supply at a sitting. Aside from his name in the list of arrivals, Prale found no word concerning himself, though there was mention of other men who had come on the _Manatee_, and who had no special claim to prominence. "I don't amount to much, I guess," said Prale to himself. "Don't care for publicity, anyway, but they might let the world know a fellow has come home." He went for another walk that afternoon, returned to the hotel for dinner, and decided that, instead of going to a show that evening, he would prowl around the town. He walked up to the Park, went over to Broadway, and started down it, looking at the bright lights again, making his way through the happy, theater-going throngs toward Times Square. In the enjoyment of the crowds he forgot, in part, the discourtesies of the day, but he could not forget them entirely. Why had the banker acted in such a peculiar fashion? It was not like a financial institution to refuse a deposit of a round million. Why had Griffin refused to see him? Why had he as good as been ordered out of the hotel? "Coincidence," he told himself. "No reason on earth why such things should happen unless I am being taken for somebody else--and that wouldn't be true in the case of Griffin."