ain't goin' to cuff him, but I got orders to pinch him. Laugh that off!"
"Arrest Mr. Westover?" I says, and I'm so startled I gave two people their right numbers. "What for?"
"He's got a hobby of not payin' his rent," says Jerry. "The big stiff! So he writes plays, hey? Well, six months on the island ought to give him plenty ideas for his next comedy!"
Then I saw Jerry was serious, so I got serious, too. Somehow the idea of this starving kid being thrown in the Bastille didn't appeal to me. No matter what anybody says, I have never believed that a writer does his best work when the world's against him. Why, six months in a cell might ruin that boy's entire future and prevent the world from meeting another Avery Hopwood! So I manage to smile and flirt Jerry Murphy into keeping his hands off Robert Meacham Westover till I had interviewed the young man and got a line on where, if anywhere, he expected to turn for some pieces of eight.
That very night as I was going out to dinner I ran across Robert standing in front of the big plate glass window of the Café les Infants, watching the chef juggling wheat cakes. Some of the numbing chill of New York's regard for a loser has crept into the air itself and Robert's coat collar is turned up, his hands
