noon
His preparations for writing the play were elaborate . He paced Tom 's room till twelve-thirty , consulting as to whether he had to plan the stage-setting ; smoking cigarettes in attitudes on chair arms . Next morning in the office he made numerous plans of the setting on waste half-sheets of paper . At noon he was telephoning at Tom regarding the question of whether there ought to be one desk or two on the stage . He skipped the evening meal at Mrs. Arty 's , dining with literary pensiveness at the Armenian , for he had subtle problems to meditate . He bought a dollar fountain-pen , which had large gold-like bands and a rather scratchy pen-point , and a box of fairly large sheets of paper . Pressing his literary impedimenta tenderly under his arm , he attended four moving-picture and vaudeville theaters .