The dead smug orderliness of the place, with the infallible Miss
Beach as its presiding genius, infuriated him. Clearly he couldn't stay
here till he was better in hand than this.
He signed his letters without reading them, and scribbled a note to
Craig that he'd been called out of town for a day or two on a matter of
urgent personal business. He hadn't thought of actually going out of
town until the note was written. But once he saw the statement in black
and white, the notion of making it true, invited him. He'd run off to
some small city where no curious eyes, animated by the knowledge that he
was Rodney Aldrich whose wife had left him to become a chorus-girl,
could steal glances at him. Where he needn't speak to any one from
morning till night. Where he could really get himself together and
think.
He added in a postscript to the note to Craig, instructions to call up
his house and tell them he was out of town.
The thought cropped up in one of the more automatic sections of his
brain, that for traveling he ought to have a bag, night things, fresh
underclothes, and so on, and the routine method of supplying that need
suggested itself to him; namely, to telephone to the house, have one of
the maids pack his bag for him and send it down-town in the car.
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