Late on an afternoon in the early spring he sat with Jack Prince in
DeJonge's restaurant in Monroe Street. Prince, his watch lying before him
on the table and the thin stem of a wine glass between his fingers, talked
to Sam of the man for whom they had been waiting a half hour.
"He will be late, of course," he exclaimed, refilling Sam's glass. "The
man was never on time in his life. To keep an appointment promptly would
take something from him. It would be like the bloom of youth gone from the
cheeks of a maiden."
Sam had already seen the man for whom they waited. He was thirty-five,
small and narrow-shouldered, with a little wrinkled face, a huge nose, and
a pair of eyeglasses that hooked over his ears. Sam had seen him in a
Michigan Avenue club with Prince solemnly pitching silver dollars at a
chalk mark on the floor with a group of serious, solid-looking old men.
"They are the crowd that have just put through the big deal in Kansas oil
stock and the little one is Morris, who handled the publicity for them,"
Prince had explained.
Later, when they were walking down Michigan Avenue, Prince talked at
length of Morris, whom he admired immensely. "He is the best advertising
and publicity man in America," he declared.
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