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He had just realized that from the corridor he couldn’t tell how many outside windows each office had. He had carefully counted from across the street and found that her window was the sixth from the right. But that might be in either the Floral Heights Development Company or the Alaska Belle Mining Corporation, S. Smith—it was not explained whether S. Smith was the Belle or the Corporation.

Bates stood still. A large, red, furry man exploded out of the Floral Heights office and stared at him. Bates haughtily retired to the window at the end of the corridor and glowered out. Another crushing thought had fallen on him. Suppose he did pick the right office? He would find himself in an enclosed waiting room. He couldn’t very well say to an office boy: “Will you tell the young lady in the blue dress that the man across the street is here?”

That would be ridiculous.

But he didn’t care a hang if he was ridiculous!

He bolted down the corridor, entered the door of the Alaska Belle Mining Corporation. He was in a mahogany and crushed-morocco boudoir of business. A girl with a black frock and a scarlet smile fawned, “Ye-es?” He wasn’t sure, but he thought she was a flirtatious person whom he had noted as belonging in an office next to Emily’s. He blundered: “C-could I see some of your literature?”

It was twenty minutes later when he escaped from a friendly young man—now gorgeous in a new checked suit, but positively known by Bates to have cleaned the lapels of his other suit with stuff out of a bottle two evenings before—who had tried to sell him stock in two gold mines and a ground-floor miracle in the copper line. Bates was made to feel as though he was betraying an old friend before he was permitted to go. He had to accept a library of choice views of lodes, smelters, river barges, and Alaskan scenery.

He decorously deposited the booklets one by one in the mail chute, and returned to his favorite corridor.

This time he entered the cream-and-blue waiting room of the Floral Heights Development Company. He had a wild, unformed plan of announcing himself as a building inspector and being taken through the office, unto the uttermost parts, which meant to Emily’s desk. It was a romantic plan and adventurous—and he instantly abandoned it at the sight of the realistic office boy, who had red hair and knickers and the oldest, coldest eye in the world.

“You people deal in suburban realty, don’t you?”

“Yep!”

“I’d like to see the manager. ” It would be Emily who would take him in!

“Whadyuhwannaseeimbout?”

“I may consider the purchase of a lot. ”

“Oh, I thought you was that collector from the towel company. ”

“Do I look it, my young friend?”

“You can’t tell, these days—the way you fellows spend your money on clothes. Well, say, boss, the old man is out, but I’ll chase Mr. Simmons out here. ”

Mr. Simmons was, it proved, the man whom Bates disliked more than any other person living. He was that tortoise-spectacled, honey-haired, airy young man who dared to lift his eyes to Emily. He entered with his cut-out open; he assumed that he was Bates’ physician and confessor; he chanted that at Beautiful Floral Heights by the Hackensack, the hydrants gave champagne, all babies weighed fifteen pounds at birth, values doubled overnight, and cement garages grew on trees.

Bates escaped with another de-luxe library, which included a glossy postcard showing the remarkable greenness of Floral Heights grass and the redness and yellowness of “Bungalow erected for J. J. Keane. ” He took the postcard back to his office and addressed it to the one man in his class whom he detested.