“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
engine jerked, the conductor shouted nasally—but Micky neither heard, saw, nor smelt them. He saw only a broad green English lawn across which stretched the purple shadows of oaks centuries old. The evening air was sweet with the scent of flowers, and the sunlight still lingered on the tree trunks among which stood a slender, wistful girl in a white frock with her arms outstretched to him, a brave smile on her lips, trying to keep back her tears—this was the vision sent to his yearning eyes amid the squalor and hubbub of the elevated, and all that he heard was a tender, girlish voice saying, "Good-by, Micky dear!"
It was exactly three minutes of one when there entered the Plaza Hotel from the 59th Street side a somewhat short, freckled faced auburn-haired, and anxious-looking young person in a shabby blue uniform. The sleek youth at the revolving doors looked at him doubtfully.
“Whodoyerwant?” he shot at him.
But Micky was already at the marble-topped desk with his eye fixed on the elegant frock-coated figure that lounged behind it. The figure continued to lounge even after Micky had accosted him.
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