Page:Frank Owen - The Actress.djvu/98

82 bringing any warmth and comfort into the room, it only served to make the shadows in the farthest corners more pronounced. The great, silent, empty building seemed strangely weird and uncanny. Somewhere down below a door banged and a bell tinkled faintly. But for these sounds Barney Creighton had no ears. His entire attention was concentred solely upon the fact that he was tired. Finally, in an unguarded moment, a sound did penetrate to his ears. It seemed like the steady chug, chug, chug of the elevator coming up from the basement, though not without a voice of protest at working after hours.

The next moment the door of the office burst open and a cheerful, good-natured voice cried, "Hello, old boy; can you loan me a match? Cursed luck, my cigar has gone out."

Barney Creighton looked up quickly, as though startled from a land of dreams.

"Hello, Dan!" he drawled, when he had at length become able to focus his mind on present things. "Where did you come from?"

"Home, originally," was the laconic reply. "But I say, old chap, can't you loan me a match? I feel as badly in need of a smoke as a fellow lost in the desert does of water. Tobacco may knock a man's nerves to pieces, but it does it in a mighty soothing manner."

Barney Creighton slid a box of matches across the desk, and Dan turned the incident into barter by reciprocating with a cigar.

For a moment, the two men smoked in silence; Barney as though in a dream, Dan as if he had just