Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III CHIVALRY True to her promise, Heloise sent her sartorial information, and Q, in search of fashion, betook himself after his chastening introduction to Sir Sydney, to New York and walked, as unsuspecting a morsel as possible, into its maw. First he was duly robbed by Heloise's recommended tailor, barber, and haberdasher; then, self-conscious and elated, secretly grinning at his own splendor, he strolled forth into the quick-stepping Fifth Avenue crowd. He walked with a cowboy's rhythmic step, and, as the man inside the clothes radiated originality, he attracted more attention than he guessed. Q liked New York. It stirred and stimulated him. Shop-windows, women, motors, towering cliffs of stone, the canyons that sent in their .streams of trucks and taxi-cabs and hurrying travelers to the great rivers of traffic — every one of these aspects hurried his blood. A man who loiters and looks is a man who courts adventure. Q's temperament was naturally a lightning conductor. From the revolving glass door of a large store there stepped out a slim and tall lady in furs, a sumptuous lady, white-faced and yellow-haired if the two waved specimens above her ears were to be trusted; as she trod past Q, just glancing at him with monkey-brown eyes, he saw a smartly dressed youth slide a hand into the loop of her shopping-bag and so cleverly relieveher of it that she did not so much as feel its absence. The youth, however, was smitten by prompt justice — a bolt from the blue. He slid several yards along the pavement, and Q, hardly breathing more rapidly, relieved him of his booty and returned it to its owner. There was a quick assembling of an appreciative crowd, the thief was put into the hands of the law, and Q, glowing with unexpected conspicuousness, gave his odd name to the...