The following day, clean-shaven and in his freshened clothes—­they were smart and well-tailored, though sober indeed compared with Barney’s, and two years behind the style of which Barney’s were the extreme expression—­Larry passed Maggie on the stairway with a smile, who gave him no smile in return, and started forth upon his quest.  He was well-dressed, he had money in his pockets, he had a plan, and the air of freedom of a new life was sweet in his nostrils.  He was going to succeed!

It was easy enough, with his mind alert for what he wanted, and with the Duchess’s liberal allowance to pay for what he wanted, for Larry to find in this city of ten thousand institutes teaching business methods, the particular article which suited his especial needs.  He found this article in an institute whose black-faced headline in its advertisements was, “We Make You a $50,000 Executive”; and the article which he found, by payment of a special fee, was an old man who had been the manager of a big brokerage concern until his growing addiction to drink and later to drugs had rendered him undependable.  But old Bronson certainly did know the fundamentals and intricacies of the kind of big business which is straight, and it was a delight to him to pour out his knowledge to a keen intelligence.

Larry, in his own words, simply “mopped it up.”  His experience had been so wide and varied that he now had only to be shown a bone of fact and almost instantly he visioned in their completeness unextinct ichthyosauri of business.  By day he fairly consumed old Bronson; he read dry books far into the night.  Thus he rapidly filled the holes in the walls of his knowledge, and strengthened its rather sketchy foundation.  Of course he realized that what he was learning was in a sense academic; it had to be tested and developed and made flexible by experience; but then much of it became instantly a living enlargement of the things of which he was already a master.

Old Bronson was delighted; he had never had so apt a pupil.  “In less than no time you’ll be the real head of that house you’re with!” he proudly declared.  Larry had not seen it as needful to tell the truth about himself; his casual story was that he was there putting to use a month’s holiday granted him by a mythical firm in Chicago.

The Duchess’s statement that it would be best for him not to seek work at once was founded on wisdom.  Larry was busy and interested, but he did not yet have to face the constant suspicion and hostility which are usually the disheartening lot of the ex-convict who asks for a position.  In this period his confidence and his purpose expanded with new vitality.

As the busy days passed down in the little street, the bantering fellowship between Larry and Hunt took deeper root.  The Duchess did not again show any of the emotion which had gleamed in her briefly when Larry had announced his new plan; but bent and silent went like an oddly revivified mummy about her affairs.  And during these days he did not again see Barney or Old Jimmie; he had learned that on the day following his conference with them they had gone to Chicago on a very private matter of business.