Whether he won or lost, at any rate he was in
the ring, and could fight. So every night he sat in Alcala, and wrote.
Sometimes he would only try to write, and that was torture.
There is never an hour of the day or night when Alcala is wholly
asleep. The middle of the house is a sort of chorus-girl belt, while in
the upper rooms there are reporters and other nightbirds. Long after he
had gone to bed, Rutherford would hear footsteps passing his door and
the sound of voices in the passage. He grew to welcome them. They
seemed to connect him with the outer world. But for them he was alone
after he had left the office, utterly alone, as it is possible to be
only in the heart of a great city. Some nights he would hear scraps of
conversations, at rare intervals a name. He used to build up in his
mind identities for the owners of the names. One in particular, Peggy,
gave him much food for thought. He pictured her as bright and
vivacious. This was because she sang sometimes as she passed his door.
She had been singing when he first heard her name. 'Oh, cut it out,
Peggy,' a girl's voice had said. 'Don't you get enough of that tune at
the theatre?' He felt that he would like to meet Peggy.
June came, and July, making an oven of New York, bringing close,
scorching days and nights when the pen seemed made of lead; and still
Rutherford worked on, sipping ice-water, in his shirt-sleeves, and
filling the sheets of paper slowly, but with a dogged persistence which
the weather could not kill.
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