"See here," he said, "haven't you even got any _curiosity_ about me? Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time _yourself_ to listen to the tale?"
"Time," said the reverend gentleman, "_time_ is just what I feel the lack of--feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly." He sighed, but it was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. "But I tell you what you do." He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. "If you want to tell me your story so very badly--(dear me, what remarkable situations the clerical life lets one in for!)--so _very_ badly, take this card to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out! Well, _good_-by!"
And with a bright backward nod he was off.
It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether Buck gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who begged from him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably Bertilloned like a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on Forty-second Street. If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why not spend them on Fifth Avenue, where sightly things abound?--indeed if you happen to be a homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like Merriwether Buck, Fifth Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very place to mark the fat and greasy citizens of your sacrifice.
Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway guards of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop of man's desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud to wait; a fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked with Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old gentleman loves to assist personally at these little comedies, sometimes; with Death a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of the trio, although several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything like that, would tell the reporters later that they had noticed something suspicious at the time. And the patron deities of New York City might have been over in Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heed _they_ took.
Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence of the great man, all at once.