O

h, I know the town," I had told them confidently—had I not been there in 18—? But no, it was not my town. It was not my New York at all that we found at our journey's end, but belonged apparently to the mob we fell among bags and bundles, by the station steps, till from our cabman's manner, when I mildly marvelled at the fare he charged us, the place, I suspected, belonged to him. Four days and nights we heard it rumbling about us. Robin got a mote in his eye, Letitia lost her brand-new parasol, and I broke my glasses—but we saw the parks and the squares and the tall buildings and the statue which Johnny Keats never climbed. Reluctantly, for the day was waning as we stood on the Battery looking out at it across the bay, we followed his example. On the third afternoon Letitia proposed a change of plans. Her eyes, she confessed, were a little tired with our much looking. Why not hunt old friends?

"Old friends?" I asked. "Whom do we know in New York, Letitia?"

"Why, don't you remember Hiram Ptolemy and Peggy Neal?"

"To be sure," I said—"the Egyptologist! But the addresses?"

"I have them both," she replied. "Mrs. Neal came to the house crying, and gave me Peggy's, and begged me to find her if I could. And Mr. Ptolemy—why can I never remember the name of his hotel?"

"You have heard from him then?"

She blushed.

"Yes," she replied. "It's a famous hotel, I'm sure. The name was familiar."

"Hotel," I remarked. "Hiram must be getting on then?"

"Oh yes," she said, fumbling with her address-book. "It's the Mills Hotel."

"And a famous place," I observed, smiling. "So he lives at a Mills Hotel?"

"I forgot to tell you," she continued, "I have been so busy. He wrote me only the other day, that, after all these years—mercy! how long it has been since he fed us lemon-drops!—after all these years of tramping from publisher to publisher, footsore and weary, as he said, he had found at last a grand, good man."

"One," I inferred, "who will give his discovery to the world."

"Oh, more than that," explained Letitia, "this dear, old, white-haired—"

"Egyptologist," I broke in.

"Publisher," she said, with spirit, "has promised him to start a magazine and make him editor—a scientific magazine devoted solely to Egyptology, and called The Obelisk."

"Well, well, well, well," I said. "We must congratulate the little man. Perhaps you may even be impelled to recon—"

"Now, Bertram," began Letitia, in that tone and manner I knew of old—so I put on my hat, and, freeing Robin to likelier pleasures, we drove at once to "the" Mills Hotel. Letitia's address-book had named the street, which she thought unkempt and cluttered and noisy for an editor to live in, though doubtless he had wished to be near his desk.

"Is Mr. Hiram Ptolemy in?" inquired Letitia.

"I'll see," said the clerk, consulting his ledgers.

He returned at once.

"There is no one here of that name, madam."

"Strange!" she replied. "He was here—let me see—but two weeks ago."

"No madam," he said. "You must mean the other Mills Hotel."

"Is there another Mills Hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Hotel number—"

"I thought," said Letitia, "this place seemed—"

She glanced about her.

"But," said I, "the address is of this one."

"True," she replied. "Did you look in the P's?" she inquired, sweetly.

"Why, no; in the T's. You said—"

"But it's spelled with a P," she explained. "P-t-o-l—"

Then her face reddened.

"Never mind," she said. "You are right—quite right. It is the other hotel. But can you tell me, please, if Mr. Hiram De Lancey Percival lives here?"

The clerk smiled broadly.

"Oh yes," he said. "Mr. Percival does, but he's out at present. You will find him, however, at this address."

He wrote it down for her and she took it nervously.

"Thank you," she said, glancing at it. "Don't be silly, Bertram. Yes, it's the publisher's. Let us go. Good-day, sir."

It was not a large publisher's, we discovered, for the place was a single and dingy store-room in a small side street. Its walls were shelved, filled from the floor to the very ceiling—volume after volume, sets upon sets, most of them shopworn and bearing the imprints of by-gone years. Between the shelves other books, equally old and faded, and offered for sale at trifling prices, lay on tables in that tempting disarray and dust which hints of treasures overlooked and waiting only for recognition—always on the higher shelf, or at the bottom of the other pile. The window was filled with encyclopÆdias long outgrown by a wiser world, and standing beside them, and looking back towards the store-room's farther end, was a melancholy vista of discarded and forgotten literature.

"Who buys them?" asked Letitia.

"Who wrote them?" I replied.

A bell had tinkled at our entrance, but no one came to us, so we wandered down one narrow aisle till we reached the end. And there, at the right, in an alcove hitherto undiscernable, and at an old, worm-eaten desk dimly lighted by an alley window, sat our old friend Ptolemy, writing, and unaware of our approach. It was the same Hiram, we observed, though a little shabbier, perhaps, and scraggier-bearded than of old, but the same little, blinking scientist we had known, in steel-bowed spectacles, scratching away in a rickety office-chair. He was quite oblivious of the eyes upon him, lost, doubtless, in some shadowy passage of Egyptian lore.

I coughed slightly, and he turned about, peering in amazement.

"Miss Primrose! Dr. Weatherby! I do believe!" he exclaimed, and, dropping his pen, staggered up to us and shook our hands, his celluloid cuffs rattling about his meagre wrists and his eyes watering with agitation behind his spectacles.

"You—in New York!" he piped. "I—why, I'm astounded—I'm astounded—but delighted, too—delighted to see you both! But you mustn't stand."

I looked curiously at Letitia as he brought us chairs, setting them beside his desk. She was a little flushed, but very gracious to the little man.

"Miss Primrose," he said, fidgeting about her, "allow me—allow me," offering what seemed to be the stabler of the wooden seats. She had accepted it and was about to sit, when he stopped her anxiously with a cry, "Wait!—wait, I beg of you!" and replaced it with his own. His was an elbow chair whose sagging leathern seat had been reinforced with an old green atlas, its pasteboard cover still faintly decorated with a pictured globe.

Seating himself again beside his desk, he turned to us beaming with an air of host, and listened with many nervous twitchings and furtive glances at Letitia, while I explained our presence there.

"It's a grand journey—a grand journey, Miss Primrose," he declared. "I only wish I were going, too."

"Tell us," said Letitia, kindly, "about The Obelisk. Is the first number ready yet?"

He sat up blithely, wetting his lips, and with that odd mannerism which recalled his visit to Grassy Ford, he touched with one finger the tip of his celluloid collar, and thrust out his chin.

"Almost," he said. "It's almost ready. It'll be out soon—very soon now—it'll be out soon. I've got it here—right here—right here on the desk."

He touched fondly the very manuscript we had surprised him writing.

"That's it," he said. "The Obelisk, volume one, number one."

"And the great stone of Iris-Iris?" queried Letitia.

He half rose from his chair, and exclaimed, excitedly, pointing to a drawer in the paper-buried desk:

"Right there! The cut is there!—cut of the inscription, you know. It's to be the frontispiece. Here: page one—my story—story of the translation and how I made it, and what it means to the civilized world. Don't fail to read it!"

He wiped his glasses.

"When," I asked, "will it be out?"

"Soon," he replied. "Soon, I hope. Not later than the fall."

"That's some time off yet," I remarked.

"You do not understand," he replied, anxiously. "You do not understand, Dr. Weatherby. A magazine requires great preparation—great preparation, sir—and particularly a scientific magazine, Dr. Weatherby."

"Ah," I said. "I see."

"Great preparation, sir," the little man went on, leaning forward and tapping me on the knee. "There must be subscribers, sir."

"To be sure," I assented. "They are quite essential, I believe."

"Very," said Hiram Ptolemy. "Very, sir. We must have fifty at the fewest before we go to press. My publisher is obdurate—fifty, he says, or he will not invest a penny—not a penny, sir."

"And you have already—?" I inquired. I was sorry afterwards to have asked the question. It was not delicate. I asked it thoughtlessly, intending only to evince my interest in the cause. Coloring slightly, he wet his lips and cleared his throat before replying.

"One, sir; only one, as yet."

"Then put me down number two," I said, eager to retrieve my blunder.

His face lighted, but only for a moment, and turning an embarrassed countenance upon Letitia, and then on me, he stammered:

"But I—"

"Oh, by all means, Bertram," said Letitia, "we must subscribe."

The Egyptologist swallowed hard.

"I think—" he began.

"Bertram Weatherby is the name, Mr. Percival," said Letitia, in a clear, insistent tone, and at her bidding the little man scrawled it down, but so tremulously at first that he tore up the sheet and tried again.

"And the subscription price?" I inquired, opening my pocket-book.

"You—you needn't pay now, doctor," he replied.

"Is one dollar a year," said Letitia, promptly, and I laid the bill upon the desk.

Hiram Ptolemy touched it gingerly, fumbled it, dropped it by his chair, and, still preserving his embarrassed silence, fished it up again from the cluttered floor. Ten minutes later, when we said farewell to him, he still held it in his hand.

"What was the matter with him?" I asked Letitia, as we drove away, glancing back at that odd and shamefaced figure standing wistfully in the doorway.

"The other subscriber," she replied. "Didn't you guess?"

"What!" I said. "You, Letitia?"

She smiled sadly.

"Poor little man!"