Tompkins bravely went for the magazines, saying, "You begin with that pile, and I'll take this. The names of the illustrators are always in the table of contents; it's simply a matter of glancing down that."
After half an hour's silent work, Tompkins exclaimed, "Here we are!" and took a magazine to the desk, at which both young men sat down. "'A Heart in Peril,'" he quoted; "'A Story by James Willis Archway. Illustrated by Murray Davenport. Page 38.'" He turned over the leaves, and disclosed some rather striking pictures in half-tone, signed "M.D." Two men and two women figured in the different illustrations.
"This isn't bad work," said Tompkins. "I can recommend 'M.D.' with a clear conscience. His women are beautiful in a really high way,--but they've got a heartless look. There's an odd sort of distinction in his men's faces, too."
"A kind of scornful discontent," ventured Larcher. "Perhaps the story requires it."
"Perhaps; but the thing I mean seems to be under the expressions intended. I should say it was unconscious, a part of the artist's conception of the masculine face in general before it's individualized. I'll bet the chap that drew these illustrations isn't precisely the man in the street, even among artists. He must have a queer outlook on life. I congratulate you on your coming friend!" At which Mr. Tompkins, chuckling, lighted a pipe for himself.
Mr. Larcher sat looking dubious. If Murray Davenport was an unusual sort of man, the more wonder that a girl like Edna Hill should so strangely busy herself about him.
Two days later, toward the close of a sunny afternoon, Mr. Thomas Larcher was admitted by a lazy negro to an old brown-stone-front house half-way between Madison and Fourth Avenues, and directed to the third story back, whither he was left to find his way unaccompanied. Running up the dark stairs swiftly, with his thoughts in advance of his body, he suddenly checked himself, uncertain as to which floor he had attained. At a hazard, he knocked on the door at the back of the dim, narrow passage he was in. He heard slow steps upon the carpet, the door opened, and a man slightly taller, thinner, and older than himself peered out.
"Pardon me, I may have mistaken the floor," said Larcher. "I'm looking for Mr. Murray Davenport."