Atchinson beamed. "That's fine! He can pick out some of the dramatic situations with you and get the spirit of your characters. He's devilish slow in turning out work, and I don't want to run any chances of spoiling the drawings by rushing him. Suppose we call him up right now and get that part of it settled." Word became action, as the publisher reached for the telephone and asked the firm's private switchboard operator in the outer office to get Victor Sarbella's apartment for him. A few minutes later the matter was arranged, and Atchinson glanced at his watch. "Phew!" he whistled. "Half past one, old man; we'd better hurry out and have a bite of lunch. Speaking of Italians, what do you say to one of those Italian feeds? I'm always digging up new places to eat and I've run across a splendid little restaurant, where the food's uncommonly good even if the location is poor--in the upper Forties." Kirklan Gilmore agreed indifferently. "Most anything will suit me," he said. The two left the publishing-house building, and, Atchinson talking almost incessantly and not always to the point, they started out. "Suppose we leg it," suggested Gilmore; "it may give me a little zest for lunch." "I'm for that," Atchinson said heartily; "it's only a dozen blocks." How many things hinge on trifles! As they neared Eighth Avenue, passing along this cheap and squalid street, which one found it hard to believe was so near to pretentious Broadway. Atchinson's emphatic voice jarred to an abrupt stop, his hand caught at the novelist's arm. "Hello!" he exclaimed. "Isn't that Mrs. Gilmore yonder?" "You mean my wife? Oh, that's impossible. Where?" But his eyes had looked too late. The woman Atchinson had seen was gone, disappeared swiftly into one of those grimy, ugly entrances before he could so much as glimpse her. "I'd take my oath that was Mrs. Gilmore," muttered the publisher, giving a puzzled stare at the sign across the way which announced, "Furnished Rooms. Rates $3 Weekly and Up." Since Helen had worked in the publishing office for two months, he felt certain he had not been mistaken. "That's ridiculous!" snorted the author. "She took the car and motored out to Tuxedo. Besides, what would Helen be doing in a neighborhood like this?" Atchinson, feeling very uncomfortable, was wondering precisely the same thing. "Humph!" he grunted. "I must have been mistaken; yes, no doubt I was. Some one who looked like her." But this was friendly diplomacy; he had got a square look, and he knew quite positively that he had not been mistaken. The woman who had hurried, almost furtively, into the cheap, unclean lodging house was Kirklan Gilmore's wife! CHAPTER III HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER