Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/136

118 usually I'd like it. But just now—I don't seem in the mood, somehow. Would you mind saving it for me till later?"

"Certainly," sighed the professor. Mr. Bland slouched into the depths of his chair. Professor Bolton turned his disappointed face ceilingward. Laughing, Mr. Magee sought the solitude of number seven.

"After all, I'm here to work," he told himself. "Alarms and excursions and blue eyes must not turn me from my task. Let's see—what was my task? A deep heart-searching novel, a novel de- void of rabid melodrama. It becomes more diffi cult every minute here at Baldpate Inn. But that should only add more zest to the struggle. I devote the next two hours to thought." He pulled his chair up before the blazing hearth, and gazed into the red depths. But his thoughts refused to turn to the masterpiece that was to be born on Baldpate. They roamed to far- off Broadway; they strolled with Helen Faulkner —the girl he meant to marry if he ever got round to it—along dignified Fifth Avenue. Then joy ously they trooped to a far more alluring, more