# The Smart Set/Volume 42/Issue 1/The Parasite

Issue 1, January 1914, pp. 5–44. A Pages from the Book of Broadway story.
“Pages from the Book of Broadway” have created more intelligent discussion and have made a stronger impression on discriminating readers than any material this magazine has ever published. . . . there is no preaching in Mr. Howard's story. It is a truthful transcription of life. The characters in it are essentially human. They are neither all good nor all bad, but in them are potentialities for both good and evil. In the unfolding of the story one senses the whole sweep of Broadway life. —from the facing page. (Full “introduction” in the Discussion page.)
THE PARASITE
A Page from the Book of Broadway
By George Bronson-Howard
If not an “old wives” tale, it is at least the oldest and the favorite in the Decameron of the Broadway choruses—pity there is no Boccaccio to write it down, that it must be one of a mere Heptameron. All the older girls know it, they who date from the days of hansom cabs at the stage door; those days when Wall Street and the House of Lords seemed principally for the purpose of bringing fortune and fame to languid, lineless ladies: days when girls with voices had been superseded by mere shapely beauties; who, in turn have been thrust forth for diligent dancers. Moreover, too much has been explained in print concerning them, and the Wall Street birds have become gun-shy, the Peerage peacocks no longer find matrimony a necessity. The golden days of '99 have passed: there are poor pickings for the “ponies” of the new regime.
So that, all along the Broadway coast, in the same long, low chorus dressing rooms where in those “good old days” celebrities were made overnight, “without half my looks, either”; youthful would-be buccaneers sigh for an adviser like “Con” Phillips to take them to those dizzy heights of stardom Violet Vandam adorns. Or, that Burton Jarvis who carried Letty Lee to fame. Or that Norman MacKinder who co-stars nowadays with Beth Bohen, or the person known generally as Arcy MacTea, friend of Toya Thiodolf. . . . Which is the longest story of all, for it touches upon the life histories of others besides: Carolus Lang, the money captain; his flighty and unworthy wife; J. Tubman Leeminster, polo player and member of many clubs. . . . And over it all hangs the ugly shadow of Milton Lazard, parasite.
The Shadenham Hotel, a favorite nest for birds of prey, was one of that legion between Longacre and the Circle: a legion that, without the patronage of those whose habits, professions or avocations are inimical to law and morality, would close their doors in a week. So that, though preserving an outward semblance of propriety, the managements must train their susceptibilities and those of their staff not easily to be shocked. For in such places flying figures in thin kimonos are ever to be met with between noon and dawn in the halls; many in such scanty garb even taking the elevator from floor to floor, for there is not much likelihood of meeting within their walls anyone that mere breaches of propriety are likely to annoy. Bellboys have been trained to ignore the sound of glass crashing and furniture overturning, of shrill imprecations and hoarsely growled oaths, even the sound of falls too muffled to be chairs or tables. Room clerks learn, after their first report, that the odor they took for cooking opium is only that of some Oriental tobacco; and that no hour is too late for a male visitor to be announced.
But, to the tyro entering the place (the novice, the stranger in New York), there are no outward signs that will prevent any young lady resident from persuading him of her high place in the society of her Southern home, or of her presence in New York for the study of music, painting or dramatic art. Below, the marble floor of the foyer is covered with Oriental rugs, the walls with tapestry or Gobelin burlap. High gilt-encrusted vases and paintings in heavy gilded frames abound. But everything is of that species of imitation “art” at which America excels. The clerk is dapper, the telephone, lift and bell-boys are neatly uniformed. Above, in the apartments—there are few single rooms in such places—there is more imitation “art”: art nouveau wallpaper and art mission furniture—sufficient to delude the average half-educated American, reared in a home that has not yet rid itself of an aftermath of horsehair and walnut, that the apartment's resident has “artistic” tastes.
It was in such an apartment on a December afternoon that one girl of the Frivolity chorus came to call upon another; finding her, though the day was far advanced, not yet awake. Nor eke her lord and master, who slumbered on with great snores: while a patient little negro maid waited, and had waited since noon; fearing to move lest she disturb the sleepers. But the young lady visitor had no such scruples, calling loudly from the sitting room door. The lord and master started up—his eyes heavy with sleep, his mouth dry and unwholesome—protesting profanely in a voice that varied between a deep bass and a high squeak.
“It's time you were up—half past three,” said the caller calmly. In return, she got a growl of semi-recognition from the pajama-clad one, who shook the sleeping figure beside him violently. “Better get out and stop that broad bawling the roof off,” he snarled, reaching for the bag of near-alfalfa and the brown cigarette papers that were always his latest supper and his earliest breakfast.
The girl beside him sat up, her short, scanty blonde hair falling untidily about her face. Had her many admirers seen her then, barren of becoming apparel, the tip of her nose red from the cold—for the windows were open; the circles beneath her eyes unerased by make-up, the eyes themselves red-rimmed, her hair lifeless and burnt from overmuch “marcelling,” and most of her coiffure—“puffs,” made-up curls and “switches”—on the dressing table, they would have failed to recognize the vision that gladdened the restaurants.
As for the parasite, stripped of his fashionable clothes, unshaven, his heavy jowls unrestricted and untamed by a collar, he looked less the part he had given himself to play, more that one nature had assigned him: but, when he rose, to potter over to the coffee percolator which the little negro girl had lit for the fourth time that day, he presented a picture more ludicrous than fearsome. He was like a giant Brownie—a huge head shaped like a coal scuttle, a heavy round stomach and the thinnest of legs and the smallest of feet, which, in one more than six feet tall, made him somewhat of a monstrosity. . . . And so the very youthful visitor giggled; which annoyed the parasite.
“Thirty years of getting my living by my wits, and then to be annoyed by a lot of field mice,” he growled heavily. The bass of the growl was not natural; had been carefully assumed for many years to disguise the thin, squeaky staccato of his given voice. He snatched cup and saucer from the trembling Lilliputian negress, and turned on the percolator spigot.
“I came in to show you my new ring,” said the caller jubilantly, slipping off one glove and displaying a large cabochon sapphire. “And he's going to give me another just like it, only a ruby. And say, Lily, you know that man Hardesty brought back stage to meet me? Why, that's Kane—Monty Kane. And he wants me to go to Europe on his yacht with him; and he says if I do he'll put a thousand in the Longacre Bank for me and get Mandelbaum to give me a good part when I come back, and he promised I could have anything I liked in the Paris shops and—”
“He didn't by any chance promise you the Flatiron Building for a chaser, did he?” sneered the parasite, then damned the Lilliputian for her vile brew of Java. But there was another knock on the door before the caller could give her indignant answer, and a third girl, a thin, anemic creature, a gray crêpe kimono wrapped closely about her, came in. She was followed by a fourth, healthy and red-blooded, smartly dressed for the street. She and the first caller, who had all the splendid color and exuberancy of youth, presented a striking contrast to the two girls in negligee.
“Having breakfast?” asked the healthy newcomer greedily. She sat herself down and, taking up a slice of bread just cut by the Lilliputian, spread it with jam and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Take some more,” urged the parasite unpleasantly; “rub it on your chest or in your hair if you can't eat it. Go on. Don't you ever eat at your own expense?” To which the uninvited banqueter only winked, being too busy wolfing bread and jam to speak.
“I wish I could eat like Sarah,” said the other newcomer in a peevish, discontented voice.
“You ought to wish you were dead and get it over with,” advised the man. “I'll bet my good right arm and my best eye you got another wail about your tough luck to let out of you. Why come here with your troubles? Life looks tough enough to a man just out of the hay without a flock of pin-headed broads busting in on him; and when they ain't eating him out of house and home, they're driving him out with graveyard groans or some lying yarn or other. Why am I the goat?”
“If you're referring to me, Milton Lazard,” said loftily the young girl of the new ring, “I'll have you know I'm not in the habit of telling lies. Don't judge others by yourself, you poor thing”—which at that time was Miss Toya Thiodolf's idea of repartee. “Look, girls”—and the history of the ring and the yachting offer was repeated. “You saw the earrings, didn't you, Lily?” The mistress of the apartment nodded, but the anæmic girl betrayed some doleful interest, and the perpetually hungry Miss Anna Drum, having eaten all she could lay hands on, greedily eyed the sparkling diamond and sapphire drops.
“You couldn't horn me in on the trip some way, could you?” she asked, in intense anxiety. “You know I could help you a lot picking out dresses and jewelry. I used to work in the swellest department store in Chi—first I was cloak model, then selling junk—tortoise shell combs and baby pins and rhinestone buckles and such; and I got to know the real jewelry, being so friendly with the men clerks—”
“And getting them to buy you large hunks of nourishment, or I'm a mangy yellow pup,” put in Lazard sourly. “There was chuck concealed somewhere in any friendship you ever had.”
Miss Drum laughed in loud boisterousness as one who has been paid a compliment. “How about it, Toya, dear?” she continued eagerly. “When do you go?”
“Oh, Arcy wouldn't let me,” said little Miss Toya, nestling her smooth olive skin against the soft fur of a huge pillow muff. Anna interpreted her sigh of philosophical resignation with a long intake of breath.
“Well—of all the mean men!” she said. “I suppose he's afraid of losing you if you ever get away from him and live like a lady.”
“Lady?” jeered Lazard, his third cup of coffee having translated his earlier growl into a mock-genial satyr's smile. “Lady! She couldn't disguise herself as a lady with that Slavonic map of hers tipping the gaff, and those heavy hoofs of hers. And she better not invite you, Drum, unless she wants the rest of the passengers to starve on that tugboat trip of hers to Coney Island.”
“Tugboat! Coney Island!!” cried Toya passionately. “Why, you poor thing, you!!!!”
“Oh, let her alone, Milton,” urged the other half of the household.
“Thirty years making my living by my wits and then got to listen to a heavy-headed slab-footed chorus girl talk about passing up yacht trips to Europe and thousands in the bank; just because some thick-headed lover says so,” said Lazard in moody wrath. “Why—”
“He says it's best in the end,” explained Toya, with the air of one who agrees that she is defending the moonshine of a madman. “Says that once you give in to those rich fellows they don't have any more use for you.”
“Oh, they pay for your entertaining conversation, do they—for the honor of being seen with a lot of pin-headed broads? Don't make me laugh!” returned the man. This time his bitter scorn held a more personal reason, for if this heresy took root in the mind of Lily Lamotte, he saw himself without the wherewithal with which to amuse himself in a certain White Light restaurant, where every night he played Sir Oracle (in motley) to the court of youths and others like himself who gathered there.
“He says, Arcy does,” went on little Miss Toya, “that sort of thing's all right for girls who haven't got the brains to do anything else. But a girl who's smart doesn't have to. . . .”
Lazard rejoiced that this went unheard by Lily, who had retired to turn the water for her bath. “Oh, and who's got brains?” he snarled savagely. “If yours ever grew the size of a flaxseed you'd blow up. If these Johns who're looking for something lighter than air 'ud only examine your head, they'd find it all right.”
Delighted with having aroused his ire—for she hated him beyond endurance for many such contemptuous appraisals—Miss Toya Thiodolf continued in calm, judicial tones: “Arcy says a fellow hasn't got any right to have a girl unless he can better her, unless he can teach her to do something she can't do herself. And he says no man with any self-respect could love a girl that he shared with anybody. He says a real man wants his girl to be his girl, or else he don't care very much for her, and if a girl had any sense she'd see that and know that kind of fellow's only with a girl for what he can get . . .”
“Half an orange in the morning and half the room and half a sack of tobacco a week—I suppose I ought to give Lily trading stamps for paying so high for me,” snarled Lazard, in mighty wrath. “And does this virtuous little guy of yours believe you got that ring and those earrings and that taxi charge account just because that John's crazy about the sound of your voice?”
“Of course a thing like you wouldn't believe it,” she responded loftily; “but that's because it's out of your class. Arcy says if Lily had a chance, if she didn't have you, she could afford to string fellows along, too. But it's just like anything when you need cash, he says—you don't get much of it. You're a fine-looking object for a girl to cheapen herself for! She ought to have her head examined.”
Anna Drum, who had profited herself of this colloquy to wolf several slices of bread and jam and drink the remaining coffee, laughed boisterously again; and the thin, anæmic girl, who was in a like case with Lily, nodded in gloomy conviction. Lazard looked from one to another, his huge moon face purpling.
When he turned he saw that a stranger was in the room—a young man, lacking only an inch or so of six feet but hardly sizable alongside the huge bulk of Lazard: dressed foppishly according to Broadway standards: his clothes more usual to Fifth Avenue. For those were the days of huge padded shoulders; of trousers wide enough for two at the hips and too narrow for one at the ankles; of collars that closed tightly, showing only a wisp of necktie below; of goosebill shoes; when the average American was a discernible freak, blocks away, in foreign countries. Lazard wore all these eccentricities and slashed foldover pockets, heavy coat cuffs with rows of stitching, and turn-ups to his trousers fully a foot wide, besides. The stranger, wearing none of them, seemed to Lazard badly dressed and insignificant.
His identity was immediately established by the trustfully adoring eyes of Miss Toya Thiodolf; and the two men measured each other as do two stranger dogs, neither coming to any flattering conclusion.
“This is Arcy, girls,” said little Miss Toya, exhibiting him with even a greater pride than she had shown the ring. The sex instinct plays strange pranks, and these two, alien to one another in class, race, breeding and education, were each desperately infatuated with the other. Lazard could see that she was making unfavorable comparisons between her cherished one and himself, which superinduced one of his usual sardonic speeches.
“So this is the famous adviser of indigent chorus molls—the guy who's got a mortgage on the brain market?”
Arcy did not shine in such exchanges of compliments, knew it, so only smiled deprecatingly. “Come, Kittens,” he said to Toya; “you've got to try on some clothes this afternoon, you know, and you've got your French lesson and your music. . . . I'm trying to teach her it's best to cut out this Broadway habit of buying half a dozen ready made suits instead of having one made by a good tailor that'll look well until it wears out,” he explained to the others, and, nodding, he took Toya off.
“Say, Lily,” said Lazard, as that young woman reëntered the room, “you missed it—you missed seeing a little guy with eyes wide apart just like a smelt, and broad just like a toothpick: that little Slav chorus girl's lover who's going to get you all rich—why, he couldn't take a handful of water outa the East River without getting an icicle down his back. It takes some stupid broad like that little Slav to fall for such a titmouse. The more I see of these smart fellows, the more I realize how lucky you are to grab a guy like me. I don't know what it is makes me stick—just habit, I guess.”
And, having reëstablished himself in her estimation by this monumental self-assurance and hint of insecurity as to her possession of him, he closed the curtain, and, scorning a bath, began to array himself in those garments that compelled the attention and won the admiration of a certain section of Broadway.

### II

Arcy MacTea, christened Robert Cameron MacThyndall, his nickname due to his habit of signing first correspondence then newspaper contributions with his initials, R. C. MacT., was careful to repress the disgust that his experience in the Lamotte-Lazard establishment had wrought within him; having learned by the experience of others that there was no surer way to lose the average woman than by preaching morality to her. He took another tack with Miss Toya, for whom he cared quite as much as she for him; though he took good care not to betray this.
“Very cheap,” said he, taking a monogrammed cigarette from a monogrammed case of gold. A part of his method of inspiring the confidence in strangers was to possess elaborate and costly accessories in “strictly good form.” “Very cheap, my dear Kittens. You shouldn't get too familiar with such people. You're judged by your companions in New York; and if you're seen in company with a girl whose telephone number is on the lists of all the club operators, well . . .” He spread his hands with a deprecatory gesture. “The hotel, too: somebody might see you going in there—”
“I only went in to show her my ring,” said Toya defensively. “She was awfully nice to me when I was green in the show business. And I wanted to make him look cheap. I wanted Lily to see, if he was so smart, why don't he show her how to get rings. I hate that Milton Lazard—always acting like he's somebody and smarter than other people, and he's less than nobody at all.”
They had entered the waiting taxicab, and Toya ordered the driver to go through the Park before heading for her tailor's address. “The Lazard kind flourishes here in New York like nowhere else,” Arcy went on. “That's because nobody knows anybody—or anything. It's just pure cheek, and keeping up appearances, that wins you anything here. If you're modest and don't dress your part, you land in Harlem and stay there. But I can't understand this Lazard, if he's got any brains at all, letting that girl do what she does. I suppose he don't care: he figures he'll just use her until something better comes along and then drop her. By the bye, I hear he's horned himself in somehow with that crazy, flighty, dyed and painted old woman, Mrs. Carolus Lang. I remember him now at her reception the other night when I went to write it up.”
“That Milton Lazard—at her place! Why, how on earth did he? She's a society woman,” gasped Toya; and Arcy laughed tolerantly. “But she is,” insisted the girl: “she's always coming to our show and sitting in a box with lots of young society men—don't I see her?”
“She pays the bills, my dear Kittens,” explained Arcy: “boxes and private supper rooms and orchestras and ragtime entertainers. And New York is full of young society men. They come here from other cities with a few good letters of introduction and a dress suit. They make a good appearance, so they get jobs as brokers' clerks or selling stock or something down in the Street, and they always 'dance beautifully' and have 'charming manners'; and get in sometimes with the 'brass band set'—the bunch that are always having their names in the paper for doing nutty things—even to the 'small affairs.'” All of which was the merest jargon to this child of the lower West Side; where still dwelt her honorable and upright foreign parents, from whom she carefully concealed any such acquisitions as her new jewelry on her Sunday afternoon visits.
“So,” went on Arcy instructively, “when these fellows want to enjoy themselves along Broadway, they get on the string of some rich outsider who pays for their pleasure. They're hired by Mrs. Lang just like the nigger orchestra. As for her being in society”—he laughed—“her husband might be because he's a really big man—and being that,he doesn't care any more for it than he cares for her, and he lives over in Europe somewhere, collecting pictures. But she's quite 'impossible'—as they say. Her foolish-looking dyed hair and her horrible white, vicious old face might be overlooked, but she hasn't the brains to make her vice anything but cheap and repulsive. A fellow like Lazard could just about appeal to her—”
“O-oh,” said Miss Toya angrily, “I'll tell Lily!”
“Don't be an ass,” he advised; “can't you see getting rid of him would be the best thing that ever happened to her?”
“I know, but she loves him,” argued Toya.
“Yes, and children love to lick stove polish and puppies like to eat shoe blacking, but it isn't good for them,” Arcy returned.
“But I'd like to do it—I hate him so,” insisted Toya. But—Arcy's brows contracting—she hastened to take his arm and murmur endearments and apologies. “I won't if you don't want me to,” she promised.
“He'd explain his way out of it: a woman always believes what she wants to believe; you'd only make enemies of both of them. They'd be telling stories around about you that Leeminster might hear—about your going around with me, for instance. You were very foolish to show those earrings and that ring, anyhow; but I knew there wasn't any use telling you not to wear them—might just as well try that Joshua trick with the sun as tell a woman not to put on the newest thing she's got—even if it's on a desert island and there's nobody but the birds to see her. But you didn't say anything about Monty Kane and that European trip, did you?”
“Oh, no, Arcy,” she protested, but she protested too solicitously and he shook his head, keeping his temper with an effort.
“All right, if you want to lose Leeminster,” he said: “you know that about slander loving a shining mark; and slander comes from envy. If you make those chorus girl friends of yours too envious, they'll surely start lying about you to all the stage door Johns, and it won't be a week before Leeminster hears. And then, good night, Leeminster!”
“I wouldn't care a bit,” she pouted: “I'm tired of listening to him tell me all those foolish things he does about being his 'little white angel on a pedestal' and his 'fragrant unplucked flower' and all that stuff. I feel so uncomfortable. And he looks at you so: just like—well, I don't know what, but funny! If he ever kisses me, I'm through with him—there's just something about him I can't stand—”
“Well, I never told you to go around with him,” returned Arcy: “you knew him before you knew me. But since you're doing it, I only showed you how to get some of those things you're always complaining about because you haven't got. He's playing a game with you: I simply showed you how to play back. It doesn't do me any good.”
“Oh, I know that, Arcy,” she hastened to say; “but it's so tiresome for us not to be able to be together more.” She snapped her little teeth viciously. “He'll have to pay dearly for that!”
The taxi drew up before her tailor's. “I do wish I could get something big like Violet Vandam did from that Perine and then tell Leeminster good night,” she said gloomily. “But I hate to give up my taxicab account, and where would I get the money to go to tailors like Koenig and places like Madame Marguery's for dresses if he didn't let me send the bills to him? And—” She looked at the sapphire ring almost as she would have looked into her lover's eyes.
“I'm not telling you to do it—you suggested it yourself,” said Arcy impatiently. “Don't try to put the blame on me and say I was so jealous I robbed you of things I couldn't give you myself. I know you women. You want somebody else to make your minds up for you, so you won't have to reproach yourself if things go wrong. Go on in and try your suit on.”
“You go ahead and drive anywhere you want to while I'm in there,” she urged eagerly.
He shook his head, but concealed his distaste for the proposal: that was quite a different thing from riding with her at another man's expense because he could offer her only street cars, to which he did not share her great aversion. “You go ahead with your appointments, and call me up after the theater,” he said.
“And you'll be at your place, waiting for me?” she asked anxiously. He nodded, then strode off down the Avenue.

### III

“It's all very well for you to be so all-fired moral. But if she were your girl and you were in my position you'd do just the same thing. You see, I'm crazy about her, Bobbert. And it's the old half-a-loaf stuff—understand?”
The explanation to his friend of his relations with Miss Thiodolf had been brought about because of Arcy's refusal to sup at Curate's—the famous restaurant which his home-town friend very much desired to see; and in the company of one like Arcy who called celebrities by nicknames. So annoyed had he been by Arcy's stubbornness that, sooner than bring about a breach, Arcy had been impulsive enough to acquaint him with his reasons: Toya was supping there with Leeminster. This confidence he immediately regretted when he saw looks of shock, pain and disgust mingle on the face of young Mr. Branch. In the society of the small Southern town, the birthplace of both, there was nothing even slightly analogous to Arcy's present equivocal position.
“If I were in your place I wouldn't wait a minute,” said Branch indignantly, finding his voice again. “I'd either make her give up him or me. If she hesitates she can't care very much for you—”
“But you don't get the angle,” interrupted Arcy irritably, “the viewpoint of her class: she can't see why she can't have us both so long as the other affair's platonic. And she sees to it, I'm sure of that. His letters are enough.”
“You read another man's letters!” asked Branch in a rising tone.
“Oh, my God—cut out that superior attitude! Listen—you're not in Greenborough, where life is laid out on simple lines. This is that large and well known city surrounded by water and money, where things are complex.
“It's these rich men,” he went on, scowling, more uneasy at Branch's silence than at his protests; “why can't they stick to their own class? But no! They've got to have their own women and everyone else worth having, too—if money will do the trick. And they've got a patience that's wonderful. And cunning—say, they go after these girls in the show business and in the shops and artists' studios just like they go stalking big game. They're not satisfied to take the experienced ones—oh, no! They want youth, and, if possible, innocence. That stirs their jaded blood. And they don't care how long they stalk or how much they spend or how low they descend.”
“That doesn't make your end of it any more decent just because they're rotten. You ought to forbid her to have anything to do with them.”
“Listen, Bob,” said Arcy, losing his patience and pounding the table; “you don't seem to realize what living in New York means. These girls get twenty a week. That would give them everything in Greenborough: they could live in nice neighborhoods and have nice things to eat and nice clothes and everything. Here it means living in a dirty street, in a dirty apartment house with paper walls and no privacy, with the smell of leaking gas and bad cooking in the halls—or else miles out in the suburbs where they have to take crowded Subway or Elevated trains late at night and stand for men giving them the eye and crowding up against them in the seats and speaking familiarly, and doing about everything else to make them feel cheap and common—when they're as pretty as Toya is. And then a walk, alone, through a lonely neighborhood at midnight. So that part of it's impossible. Then there's boarding houses: decent ones where you have any food fit for human beings cost at least twelve a week—and for a hall room at that. Which leaves her eight dollars to dress on and for carfares. Well, she might get away with that, but there's three whole months in the year when the show business is practically suspended, so money has to be saved for that. Precious few are lucky enough to get into a success like 'The Bonbon Girl' every season. Failures mean three to eight weeks of rehearsal without pay. Then if a girl doesn't want to leave New York, she must rehearse for three or four shows a season, not counting the intermissions between jobs. While on the road they get twenty-two dollars per—they raise them a little—and it's almost impossible, traveling, for a girl to have a clean bathroom and a clean bed and decent food. It would be all right if they weren't thrown in touch with a life of luxury all the time. But they are.”
“I'm not thinking about her: it's about you, Arcy,” began his friend defensively. “You—”
“But I'm trying to explain me,” exploded the exasperated Arcy. “Those rich fellows deliberately make these girls dissatisfied with the way they've been brought up. If the girl's a nice young thing, on the lookout to defend herself as mamma has taught her, they get the theater manager to introduce them in the most polite, respectful sort of way. A lot of them put money into shows just for such privileges. Then they take her to tea some place where she feels shabby and badly dressed among a lot of idle, gaudy women. And he sends his car to take her home from the theater some nights. And pretty soon he tells her he knows some modiste who could make clothes that would just suit her: he'll introduce her and the shop will trust her. Then he says he hates to think of her eating at that cheap boarding house or in those hashhouses—or home where mother cooks cornbeef and cabbage. Some hotel or restaurant advertises in some Wall Street paper he owns or has a share in (generally a lie, that, but it's a recognized part of the system) and he takes out the advertising in restaurant bills. And, as he never uses it all up, it won't be costing him one penny if she signs checks there for every meal she eats every day. Same way about a taxicab account.
“And so it goes on—they've got a thousand tricks: the game's been worked out as scientifically as chess. There's the friend-gone-abroad, saves-money-if-she-lives-there, have-to-get-a-caretaker-for-apartment-if-she-don't, dodge. Anyhow, if they really go seriously after some young girl, no matter how touchy she might be about accepting money, in a few weeks they've got her used to eating expensive food, taking a taxi to go a block, sitting around in smart restaurants, wearing Paris clothes—and, maybe, living in a beautiful apartment. Now what a chance they're ever going back to smelly Harlem flats or cheap boarding houses, to being jostled and insulted in crowded street cars, to wearing little cheap ready made suits and imitation lace collars! You read about it in books, Bobbert, but it doesn't happen in life, believe me. The girl does one of two things: she either becomes his mistress—which means she'll last with him a few months or a few years, and then has to hunt another; or else, if she's clever, she invents some excuse for putting him off and thinks up some other way of getting his money. And if the last happens, he hollers 'blackmail,' and calls her every kind of name. After he's deliberately taught her to need the things. A hot lot of sports they are!”
“I agree with you,” gasped Branch. “Good God—what people!”
“Well, that was the way with Toya,” Arcy pursued. “If she hadn't met me, she'd have fallen for Leeminster, I suppose. There's a fine young hypocrite. Belongs to Uplift Leagues and Civic Betterment Societies and Anti-Boss Politics—has a reputation as spotless as the driven snow; passes the plate every Sunday in one of the fashionable churches—a vestryman, I think; and makes speeches at silk stocking political meetings about 'Down with immorality. Drive the women off the street. Put out the red lights.' Those fellows can't understand why anybody should want to be immoral but themselves. But they don't call their way of doing things immoral. Oh, my, no! Immorality, my dear Bobbert, paints its face very thickly and wears loud clothes and doesn't go to church.”
“I'm glad I stayed in Greenborough,” said Branch indignantly.
“Everybody there keeps too good a watch on one another for much dishonesty or immorality,” was Arcy's cynical answer. “I guess it about comes down to that, Bobbert. And that goes for countries as well as people. Switzerland has the most honest government as well as the most moral people—it's the smallest. And the United States, which is the largest, has the most dishonest government, and—”
“Don't say that about our people, Arcy,” Branch interrupted. “America's not New York, you know.”
“It's New York and Chicago and San Francisco and the big cities, though, that influence the rest of the country,” Arcy replied gloomily. “Look at me, for instance. Down in Greenborough, I had the highest sort of a sense of honor. Why? Because that was the standard. I come up here and find the only standard is being a 'smart fellow.' And being smart means getting money. . . . You know, I can even understand those fellows who live off women, now. Not that I haven't just as much contempt for them as you have,” he hastened to add before Branch could break in with a shocked exclamation; “I saw one of them today—the worst kind they breed, I guess; and my disgust at being in the same room with him almost made me spit on him. He was a low specimen. . . . But take a fellow who means well but who's just weak, and put him in my position. (This is my day off or I wouldn't be sitting around talking to you, bet your boots on that.) Here I work on the Argus about twelve hours a day; hardest kind of work reporting is—chasing all over the city following a dozen ends to a story, seeing a hundred people a day, snatching a sandwich and a cup of coffee for dinner, generally, then off again for half the night, sometimes all night if a late story breaks loose and you have to get it for the lobster edition—the late one. No extra pay for overtime in our business, either. Well, then I meet Toya and go and have supper somewhere—that's my first real meal, and my first chance to enjoy myself. And the only places open are the all-night restaurants.
“Now take a man like that who's got a girl. They get home past daybreak, and he's supposed to be at the office by eleven. Now figure—the alarm clock goes off and he's dead to the world, but he has to drag his heavy head off the pillow and forget his aching body and snatch a cup of coffee and off. And every time she says: 'Oh, dearest, take a day off. Get some sleep. You're killing yourself. Sleep until two, then we'll go for a ride and have lunch out in the country.' I guess that sounds rotten! I wouldn't listen, because I'm looking forward to a career; but imagine some fellow who hasn't got much strength of character. He does. Then he listens again, and finally he loses his job. She says: 'Don't worry, dear, we won't starve.' Well, he gets another job, and this time he isn't so scared of losing it. The next time he loses it he don't hurry getting another. They drive around and go into the country as she said, and go to professional matinees and get up late and read novels and what not. Well, finally, the last time he's out, he has such a bad 'rep' for unreliability it's hard to get in again; and he takes that for a sop to his manhood: he tells himself 'I tried, didn't I?' every day. But, really, he's enjoying himself loafing around, having all he had when he worked, and not having to work. And, pretty soon, he says: 'What fools fellows are to work themselves into the grave for that little bit of money I made!' He's thinking about how easily the girl borrowed a century note from some rich man.
“Well, that can't keep up, though. Pretty soon they pawn her jewelry. Then, he don't ask her any questions as to where the money comes from. . . . And all the while he's kidding himself the big opportunity of a lifetime is going to come and hunt him up, and he was wise to wait for it instead of wasting his time on a small job. For most of 'em make less than I do and have to be at the office at nine o'clock, not eleven. That's where these vice prevention societies are all wrong about these 'cadets.' Women make as many as they make what the papers call 'white slaves.' It's funny, Bobbert, but there are very few people in the world that deliberately start out to be vicious. Most of them wouldn't know the truth about themselves if you showed 'em they'd be insulted. They've been kidding themselves too long.”
“I hope you'll remember that in your own case,” said Branch significantly; then added hurriedly, fearing he had implied too much: “But what about this fellow you saw today—if so few are really vicious?”
“Oh, he was an exception,” returned Arcy, frowning. “What a big rat he was—pfugh !—don't let's talk about him. . . . But what do you mean—in my case? What do I gain from Toya seeing Leeminster? I'd be better off if she didn't. The jewelry she gets doesn't help me, and I'm on pins and needles whenever I have to ride in the taxi with her. And I have my position just as I always had, and when we're out together I pay the bills. We don't even live together. Don't get any wrong ideas, Bob. I, personally, don't want Toya to string Leeminster. But I'm not so selfish as to take away her chance of getting a lot of valuable jewelry that will make her independent so if she's out of a job she won't have to stop her French lessons and all that. The poor kid quit school at thirteen and went into a department store. That jewelry will pay for the education that's so necessary if she's ever going to get up in the profession. My wages are just about enough to support me.”
“Oh, well, I dare say you've got plenty of excuses, Arcy,” yawned Branch: “you'd have to have for you to mix up a game like this.” He looked at his watch. “Well, old man, as this is my last night in New York, I'm going to see Curate's: I wouldn't dare go back to Greenborough without having seen it—and all the celebrities.”
'All the celebrities catch the last train for the country,” growled Arcy: “they don't hang around supper places; they've got something better to do. It's people who're trying to be celebrities. But if you're determined, I suppose it's up to me. Come on.”

### IV

Curate's, famous from sea to sea, the scene of farces, novels, a thousand short stories and a million newspaper paragraphs, was in its heyday at that time, and in full flower the hour they entered it—past midnight. All the pretty faces and shapely forms that the audiences of Broadway musical shows had admired earlier in the evening seemed to be here; their escorts, for the most part, middle-aged men whose assumed rakishness sat ill upon them, and younger ones who, it seemed, had found it necessary to drink heavily that it might not be unbecoming to them also: both sorts (in the main) of the unmistakable “Avenue” brand, their impeccable dresscoats, collars, ties, flat-heeled pumps or shoes, and the width of their dress trousers braid, exact duplicates each of the other. It seemed a sort of uniform. To be in the slightest degree original, to vary from type by so much as a larger or extra shirt stud, marked the outsider: it was that dreadful and unforgivable calamity, “bad form”: a different viewpoint from that day of real elegance in grooming, the Regency, when he with the taste (or the valet) to invent attractive novelties of attire was the most fashionable: different from the viewpoint of any rational age. But, when conventional men hold power, conventionality must be capitalized, must become a virtue. And every one of these conventionally attired men was a member of exclusive clubs, the holder of a name honored by ancestor worshipers or by Dun and Bradstreet, a part of past or contemporary history.
“It's funny how quickly New York turns individuals into types,” Arcy had once said to Toya. “You know those hollow lead moulds that confectioners pour hot candy in and take it out shaped like a man. There must be one of those around here. Those fellows come from everywhere: from all classes; not half of them are born gentlemen, not a quarter born New Yorkers. But, all of a sudden, there's another thin-legged stork looking exactly like all the rest. One tailor in New York not only makes clothes for those fellows but picks out shirts, ties, boots—everything that goes with it. They'd as soon be seen walking the Avenue in their pajamas as wearing something he didn't approve.”
J. Tubman Leeminster was not one of the latter sort, Arcy, despite his dislike, was compelled to admit. The Leeminsters dated from the days when “York” was substituted for “Amsterdam.” So far as the “Street” was concerned, no Leeminster had ever been forced to take money from the unhallowed hands of its original owners: Leeminsters left all that sort of thing to more recent people; or to those unfortunates of their own class who were burdened with bourgeois ideas about love in connection with marriage. Frankly, like embarrassed peers, the Leeminsters had long since looked on marriage as a vocation. They acknowledged their inability to cope with climbing commercials on their own ground: besides, what need, when such would presently invade theirs? So they allowed the new people to make the money, and then, as a great favor, agreed to share it. For three generations, Leeminsters, male and female, had exchanged social position for large quantities of newly laid golden eggs which it then became their life-work to scatter in the manner most agreeable to them, and most disagreeable to their constitutions. With the result that this later Leeminster was a young man of singularly vacuous countenance, scanty hair and an unhealthy pallor.
To see this person with Toya was like a burning brand thrust into the face of Arcy MacTea. “Damn him!” he said viciously. “To think I have to sweat twelve hours a day for forty dollars a week, and he gets everything just for being kind enough to live!” He checked himself, remembering. “He doesn't, though, Bobbert,” he added, with a grin: “he's got to marry now he's had his fling—Miss Mae Hefflefinger, the daughter of the fellow who makes those hams you see advertised so much. 'Mae'! I'll bet he shivers every time he sees that Riverside Drive spelling. She'll be 'Mary'—or 'May' at least—on the wedding announcements; see if she isn't.”
“And he has the nerve to be seen at supper with another girl?” asked Branch.
“Oh, Bobbert, you weary me,” protested his friend. “Curate's is as far from Canary's as the Argentine Republic. The women of his set don't come over on Broadway except to go slumming. And then they pride themselves on being Continental; and, in Paris, if the Faubourg St. Germain crowd goes to Montmartre and sees a duke with a pretty figurante, they realize it isn't his fault: they aren't expected to be there; so they pretend they never saw him there next time they meet—officially. . . . You're thinking of Greenborough again; where there's only two hotel restaurants and everybody has to act like they're in church.”
Arcy was talking rapidly, almost feverishly; for Toya was looking toward him; and he must present an appearance of indifference. He knew her nature well enough to realize that one of his strongest holds on her was her belief that he absolutely lacked jealousy—which made her suspect he did not sufficiently love her, and increased her own infatuation. So he resolutely refused to catch her eye. To all appearances, he might not have known of her presence. Now he threw one leg over the other, which turned him completely from sight of her, and continued his animated monologue.
“Look at this bunch in here tonight. There might be a dozen 'professionals' eating after the show because they're hungry; and a dozen more out-of-town people, Harlemites and Brooklynites—though the headwaiter don't give many seats to people he don't know, not at this hour, when the tipping's at its height. The remainder are just Dyak head hunters. Look at these girls. Hardly one's twenty-five. This kind of men want chickens—'flappers' they call 'em. When girls get past the flapper stage, if they haven't laid something by, it's them for the college boys. That's the first step downward, and it's fast after that, unless they marry or make good on the stage. And these fellows don't want 'em to make good and get independent and choose whoever they want. They discourage it. 'What do you want to stick around a stuffy theater for, and sit in cold dressing rooms?' they say. 'A pretty girl like you don't need to. Most of these actresses have to get ahead because they're so unattractive to men. But you . . .' And, will you believe it, most of those poor conceited little fools fall for it. I heard one of them pitying the best known woman star in America, because she saw her plainly dressed, hurrying along on foot, while this girl in a flaming gown rode past in a motor car. Pitied her! Imagine!!” And Arcy burst into a boisterous laugh which was only half real.
But his merriment fled instantly when a uniformed page was heard moving near and murmuring as if to the ears of all at large: “Message for Mr. MacThyndall. Message—” Arcy called him.
“You, sir? Telephone message,” said the page, and let one eyelid droop the merest trifle, which he knew would increase the size of his tip: the note's only connection with the telephone being that it had been written at the operator's switchboard. Lacking the easier opportunities of the foreign supper places where men and women have a common retiring room, Broadway had long ago hit on this method of communicating with some other person in the room without arousing the suspicion of escorts. One simply excused oneself to telephone, and there wrote the message, which was delivered as if it had come over the wire.
“Pardon me, Bob—I wonder how they knew I was here?” said Arcy hypocritically, as he opened the envelope. “Go next door to Noel's, dearest,” he read. “I'll pretend a headache or something and get him to put me in a taxi, and I'll just drive round the block and come back. How's the Kitten's papa, precious?” The note concluded with a row of “x's,” the approved method for the germless transmission of kisses. Guiltily, Arcy tore it up.
“Lucky she wasn't with me when I got that,” he said aloud, pretending wholesale roguishness. “That girl must have telephoned every place along Broadway. . . . Well, I suppose I'll have to go, Bobbert.”
He noted, grimly, that his friend, who had taken so strong a moral stand on his other peccadilloes, seemed to consider this deception—as he supposed it—of a trusting mistress quite the merriest sort of jest. “And she sitting here all the time!” Branch chuckled. “Say, hasn't this one got a friend? Can't you butt me in somehow?”
Arcy was beginning to weary of Branch. They had been school and college chums, to be sure; but Branch had not progressed in worldly wisdom. Even had Toya's supposed rival been real, and had she had a complaisant friend, Arcy would not have introduced her to the Greenborough man. Such sophisticated maidens only suffered boredom when they were well paid for it.
Then, with a sudden blush for his stupidity, Arcy realized that Branch's viewpoints were identical with those of the very men he had been excoriating: Branch was the average American: what an ass he (Arcy) had been to try to explain the philosophy of quite another world!
“Don't take all that seriously I was telling you, Bob,” he said, forcing a laugh. “I only met Toya Thiodolf last week; and I haven't any more to do with what she does than you have. I was only talking to see how much I could shock you; and you fell for it—ha, ha! You seemed to expect to be shocked in the big town, so I couldn't bear to disappoint you. Of course you're right. She'd have to give Leeminster up before she could be my girl. I never thought you'd swallow all that, honest! Oh you small-town kid!” By this time he had managed to make his laugh hearty. “So long. Call me up to say good-bye before you take the train South.”
Branch gripped his hand as of old. “I'm willing to know I'm a mark to hear it isn't so about you,” he said: “I'd never have got over your being that kind of a fellow, Arcy. It would have put me in a horrible hole if you ever came back to Greenborough and I had to invite you over to the house where my sisters are—and where the sweetest little girl in the world's going to be within the next year . . .”

### V

Noel's, only a door from Curate's, owed its continued existence very largely to the fact of this proximity; for, although Arcy MacTea was yet to discover it, most of its patrons had reasons for being there somewhat similar to his own.
There is no Noel's in the Broadway of the new generation—a generation being but half a decade on Broadway. But then there existed a night life not dissimilar to that of Paris; of which Curate's represented the center, the Manhattan Café de Paris; Noel's, one of those Montmartre cabarets or bars where gather well dressed Apaches, minor poets and actors. When this place had opened for the eleventh time under the eleventh name, Noel, who was risking all the savings he had gained as a captain of Curate's waiters, had gained permission to have a small door cut through into Curate's by which his waiters might come to fill those occasional orders for food which his patrons might give. These in the past history of the place had never been sufficient to defray the heavy cost of maintaining a kitchen: without the loss from which the place could easily be made to pay, as drink orders had always been numerous and were three-quarters profit, sometimes more.
But Noel had never imagined that this was the door to fortune. A modest profit on his investment was all he had hoped for. The existence of the door, however, by one of those curious paradoxes which give life its unfathomable aspect, scon made it impossible for Curate's to handle Noel's numerous food orders and provide promptly for its own customers; so he was forced to provide his own kitchen, after all. Forced? It was now the pleasure of his life; for it added another ten per cent to his already doubled expectations.
But, although his waiters no longer needed the door, unless it was to procure some unusual brand of liquor or cigars, it still remained in constant use. To close it, in fact, would have been to close Fortune out. One girl had learned of the door soon after Noel opened, and had used it to enter the place—bareheaded, uncloaked, ungloved, surprising everyone—to spend some precious minutes with the object of her affections, while the other man, smiling in the fatuous belief that he had made a conquest, was at that moment in Curate's, imagining she had gone to rearrange her hair or powder her nose. Within the week hundreds knew of the door: a knowledge they disseminated among their kind, carefully concealing it from any others. Thus, on following nights, Noel was covering serving tables with tablecloths and putting in extra and incongruous chairs.
That week Noel began the practice of locking his front door, admitting no one from the street farther than the cloak-room vestibule until he had lifted the curtain and scanned his would-be patron's face: a proceeding that enabled him to plead a lack of vacant tables to any whose presence would complicate affairs for those already within.
And so, as he seemed to be making a determined effort to keep the public out, it used all endeavors to crowd his place. To be admitted became somewhat of a cachet, a certificate of standing in Subterranea. He was careful to exclude, at least, all whose personal appearance did not indicate prosperity. Nor was this enough; sartorial splendor must be supplemented by adequate spending or one soon lost honor: Noel could pick and choose now, and he did.
Arcy found favor in his eyes on this, his first appearance, and of the crowd in the cloakroom that awaited Noel's pleasure was the first to be admitted. The ex-waiter-captain congratulated himself on his discernment when his new patron was immediately hailed by that ornamental fixture of his restaurant—Mr. Milton Lazard: deep in whose debt Noel was, for Lily Lamotte was among the first who had used the door in the wall. Since then Lazard had herded in from other cafés many friends and associates. These had become Noel's steadfast patrons: entering around midnight, remaining until dawn; hence calling themselves 'The Breakfast Club.' For them, even on the busiest nights, the southeast corner was always reserved.
Arcy was insensible to the honor of Lazard's recognition, mentally anathematizing Toya for forcing him to identify himself in public with such a person. He approached, therefore, somewhat sulkily.
“Mr. Einstein, Mr. Brown, Mr. Carey, Mr. Satterlee, Mr. Cotterel—my friend Arcy MacTea. As fine a lot of gentlemen as ever scuttled a ship, my boy. Just as harmless as a lot of baby rattlesnakes. You can trust them with anything you've got if it's nailed down. Take your hand out of the gentleman's watch pocket, Kid Einstein. Always ask a man for the time and see if he won't give it to you before you try to take it. That's what they call etiquette, you black-muzzled, cliff-dwelling kike. Although I know some men so mean they wouldn't let you set your clock by their watch: closer than the next second. Take out your glasseye, Carey, and do a trick for the gentleman. Hurry, hurry, hurry,” he bellowed in the tone of a circus barker; “the show is now going on, on the inside. The Chandelier Brothers will jump from chandelier to chandelier—through the eye of a needle—without the aid of a net. On your left, the wild man is about to devour a raw Jew.” He bent down as though addressing from a platform some passers by below. “How did you like it, sir?” “Rotten,” the invisible one was supposed to answer. Lazard raised his voice to the barker's bellow again: “You hear what the gentleman says—'Best show on the Island.' That's what they all say. Only a nickel—half a dime.”
You are to imagine this monologue punctuated by bursts of wild laughter and the applause, not only of his companions but of many parties at nearby tables. Lazard, conscious of his conspicuousness, made his voice reach as many as possible, succeeding sometimes in engaging the attention of all present; for it was an intimate room; narrow, low-roofed; its patrons crowded together on leather seats along the walls, the center cleared for dancing. But above the din and bustle Lazard's bellow rose whenever he considered he was about to voice some iconoclasm that would add to the reputation he coveted: that of “the man who owned Broadway,” “the human night-key of New York,” “the man who locks the town up”—such descriptions bestowed by reporters being coveted by semi-celebrities of the Nigntless Lane.
Lazard had learned since their meeting that Arcy was a reporter: hence the altered attitude; and, despite his dislike, Arcy was amused. Quite a different person this from the scowling, snarling, unshaven satyr of the Shadenham. His smile was agreeable, his teeth evenly matched and of an extraordinary whiteness; his gestures and inflections were those of one with a genuine talent for clowning. Arcy laughed as loudly as any, and, refusing the proffered refreshment, insisted upon paying his initiation fee. To which Lazard objected loudly, tossing down a yellowback and challenging the waiter to dare receive any other: an openhandedness he took care should never be overlooked; the impression going abroad that he was both liberal to a fault and annoyed by a surplus of wealth. Even his intimates were not allowed to imagine Lily Lamotte in any way responsible.
“A good little pal,” he would assert patronizingly; “a good little pal. I know I can get half of everything she's ever got—only the poor little kid never has anything by the time she gets the bad news from the rent man. And say, I'd stop the bad news myself; but as soon as you start giving women anything you're gone. Go to 'em clean as a snowbird and they fall. But if you start handing shed and doughnut sugar, they start handing it to some nice boy they'd like to see get along. Just mother instinct, I guess. Take care of them and they think they're cheated. But let 'em give you anything, no matter how petty larceny it is, and it makes 'em happy. They think they're supporting somebody. That's why it's all banked in my name. If I let her know she's drawing fifty a month more than she hands me, she'd blow me tomorrow. I even kid her I'm using some of it. . . .”
Which plausible explanation with a condescending loftiness of delivery belittled the insignificant Lily Lamotte and exalted her amiable consort. The reputation of being an object of the affections of one for the pleasure of whose presence others paid liberally was coveted by Lazard; but he resented bitterly its concomitant reputation—resented it because it gave rise to the inference that his own splendid talents were unable to provide plenteously.
Fearing that such an ill impression might have been made upon Arcy, Lazard now set earnestly to work to remove this and replace it with one of a gentleman adventurer, a soldier of fortune, a romantic figure spinning cobwebs of conspiracy, a hero of splendid hazards. Beads of perspiration stood out on his countenance, as he concentrated on comments and narratives at once humorous and thrilling—in which he was always the central figure.

### VI

It was to the possession of this narrative ability that Milton Lazard owed a laborless life. This accomplishment had early discovered for him his natural element: where young women passed the hat among the listeners; finding, after one or two physical mishaps, it was less hazardous to impose upon females. Equipped with a faithful companion, then, he followed her fortune through the mining camps of the West; until that section knew him too well. Followed one experience with melted tar plus eiderdown, and an enforced ride astride the narrowest of seats; forcing him to seek the protection of the less barbarous East, accompanied by the prettiest (and youngest) of his many admirers.
His one talent, like his deformed body, was part of an atavism: his paternal ancestor some centuries removed having worn cap and bells in the service of a feudal Fleming, who, in the interest of mirth, had ordered that the illegitimate child of one of his serfs should be deliberately maimed in childhood that he might be forced to adopt the calling of jester and tale teller: Sieur Huon shrewdly guessing that a love child, by so splendid a young animal as the serf girl, would inherit to the full the talents of his father—a wandering troubadour, jongleur, Rabelaisan-Villonesque poet.
Always there is some explanation for such monstrosities as Milton Lazard: the sins of “humanity” are visited upon the “civilization” that permits them. Hedged about by powerful lords and their ladies, the terrible pain that Sir Huon's wanton cruelty had caused to torture the unhappy jester must be crushed down, hidden from the sight of men. But the hate and malice it had engendered had been too strong to die unexpressed: at intervals the jester's family tree bore gallows fruit; even to the twelfth and twentieth generation. But it had not been until Milton Lazard that the exact portrait of the wretched jongleur's son, save for the humped back, was repainted: the huge head, the puny legs, undersized feet and hands. His nature was that same strange mixture of fear and hate, cowardice and cunning; he had the same ability to make jests when there were curses in his heart: he deferred to the strong and tortured the weak. All men and women were, to him, created for but one purpose: that they might be of advantage to him. And his ambition was to lead a life of laborless ease. To him, men who won success by work were not admirable but laughable.
It was a pernicious doctrine he preached; but it had the same doubtful merit of flashy wit that the quips and quirks of the jester had; who always chose sacred subjects for his highest flights. And there is that in men, especially young men, that fears protest lest it show a conventional viewpoint; they fear being conventional more than being wrong. Certain aspects of life are revealed to the clever youngster as other than what they have been taught; so that it is easier to assume that hypocrisy alone shields all other aspects than to discover the truth. Moreover, it is easier to be brilliant at blaming than at praising.
Arcy MacTea being at this earlier stage of mental development, it was not long before Lazard had removed his dislike: even, as the drinks circulated, caused him to be so eager for the praise of a high priest of the super-knock, that he ventured into those realms of conversation forbidden to the discreet. . . .

### VII

“What were you doing sitting there and laughing with that Milton Lazard?” demanded little Miss Toya sharply. “Do you want people to talk about us the way they talk about him and Lily? And after what you said to me! And there's three girls from our show in Noel's. Tomorrow they'll have it all over the theater!”
“That's rich,” returned Arcy, somewhat unsteadily—the night air had not yet blown away the fumes of many Scotches. “You telling everybody you do what I tell you to do and what a smart fellow you've got, and then blaming me if you get a bad reputation: I've warned you hundreds of times. And who asked me to wait in Noel's? What kind of people did you expect me to meet there? Would I have known Lazard at all if you hadn't introduced us?”
Toya had no answer for so many arguments. If she had been sufficiently gifted to voice her subconscious thought, her reply would have been that his business was to rectify a flighty, inexperienced girl's mistakes, not to add to them.
Unless one counts those girls unfortunate enough to be infatuated with him—in which cases he had always taken care to select grossly ignorant or brainless ones—Lazard had less success in convincing women than men. Women, if they are not blinded by passion or vanity, seldom err in detecting baseness of character; seldom fail to be aware of the hallmark even if they do not appreciate it. It is only that their sense of logic, being a scant half-century old, has not been sufficiently developed to give synthetic reasons for results; and this is to their benefit rather than to their hurt; for one cunning of argument may twist to his will the thoughts of those who put their faith in it; while a woman, whom the subtlest philosophy influences not at all—in personal matters at least—is not turned by it from her original impressions and purposes. So—
“I don't like that Milton Lazard. He's no good. Please don't be seen out with him, Arcy.” Finding her anger unavailing, she had descended to a more dependable weapon. “You know he doesn't like you. He's jealous of you: he hates everybody who's smarter than he is. If he's so bright, why's Lily doing what she's doing? Terrible: an awful nice girl like that—if you get her by herself. But he has such a bad influence on her. I wish he'd go and marry that rich old woman, Mrs. Lang. Lily would get along all right then—”
“Lazard hasn't got anything to do with what Lily is,” returned Arcy irritably. “He's a fool, smart fellow as he is, to stick around with that kind of a girl. What was she when he met her? Just the same. Wasn't even bluffing at the stage . . .”
“Lily didn't tell me she supports him,” defended Toya indignantly: “I just know. She's always saying he makes his own money, too. But I'm surprised at you, Arcy: supposed to be smart and everything . . .”
“It's a good thing I've got a regular job and people see me working every day,” returned Arcy, “or I suppose they'd be saying the same about me. I tell you, Lazard's made all kinds of money. He don't care about her. He's only sorry for her, afraid she'll commit suicide or something if he breaks away. He can't change her any. She's got no ambition. She don't want to study like you do. . . .”
Toya shrugged her shoulders. She ceased to argue, for Arcy had taught her that what she considered argument failed to convince anyone; but her vision of Lazard was unalterable. “Well—you'll see,” she could not forbear adding, however, as they entered Arcy's rooms.
Arcy had a studio apartment overlooking the rector's garden of an Episcopal church which, save for the ivy-covered brick wall which hid the sidewalk, gave him an uninterrupted view of lower Fifth Avenue. Here it was like London. The houses had that beauty architecture alone cannot give—age must assist. There were polished brass knockers on white paneled, mahogany or rosewood doors; pilasters that had the grace of ancient Doric columns, spiral handrails of green bronze or of brass, ornamenting short flights of long, thin marble doorsteps. In the basements below, in the drawing rooms above, were window boxes of brightly colored flowers or of creeping plants; on either side of doorways closely clipped dwarf evergreens in miniature tubs, or else, where there were wooden doorsteps, more oblong boxes of flowers. More than one house was set amid rose-trees, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums and other hardy growths. Only the rector's garden was walled: this, which Arcy's windows overlooked, was a long, pleasant lawn, a fountain in its center bordered with flowers, in the pool of which swam gold and silver fishes. Here the nurses of a crèche, where workingwomen left their children for the day, were allowed to bring their small charges to roll amid garlic and buttercups and clover—for it was like a piece of meadow brought intact on a magic carpet. Robins and swallows, in spring, nested in the ivy or under the quaint chimney pots of the old rectory; and these, no doubt, had brought the pollen of those growths of the open country. Occasionally catbirds came, blue jays, too, and in an old hollow tree a swarm of bees had recently installed a queen.
For these sights and sounds Arcy had been willing to disburse almost half his weekly wage: and before meeting Toya, had spent much time seated at the large bay window watching and listening, pen in hand, to record the inspiration of the moment: Arcy's ambition had been the production of historical novels; and in this Old World corner, staring at stained glass windows to the accompaniment of the mellow pipe organ rolling forth Gregorian chants, his blood had been stirred by the exploits of his dead and gone heroes, and finding the inspiration he sought, he had written steadily and well.
Toya's advent had changed all that. He had not added a chapter to his novel since their mating. Yet still his surroundings served a purpose. Coming down here away from the tawdriness of Longacre, she had been impressed and had begun to realize there might be reasons after all why he would not readily marry her; even though his infatuation had swept away most of his resolutions. And she, being wise beyond her years, had ceased to speak daily of marriage; finding a safer road to its achievement by adopting new tactics.
“It isn't as if you'd taken up with one of those big cats,” she had purred; “it's only a little kitten, and her papa can teach her anything he wants her to know, can't he?” Here she nestled closer to him. “And he can make her an educated kitten that he'll be proud of, too. 'Cause it's a smart little kitten—it's a smart little kitten,” she crowed. “Isn't it, papa?”
Which, were chroniclers honest, is a saner speech than most endearing ones exchanged between infatuated young couples. And it had delighted Arcy. “That is a smart kitten,” he approved; “and her papa will see it gets its little education.” Neither seemed greatly in earnest, but neither had ever been more so. On the following day, Arcy had laid out a course of reading for her, and had taken her to a retired governess who was to superintend, and assist in, her study. Singing lessons had followed. The reformation in clothes had come before that. All of which had so impressed the great Bob Ledyard that, when he had put on “The Bonbon Girl,” he had promoted little Miss Thiodolf to a small part. And where J. Tubman Leeminster had once pursued perfunctorily, an amateur collector after a pretty butterfly, he was now as grimly determined as an enthusiastic naturalist chasing the rarest of Venus moths.
It was on the subject of Leeminster (his favorite grievance) that Arcy spoke when they sat before the small studio fire that the early autumn chill had rendered necessary. “Here we could have been home long ago,” he said gloomily. “How am I ever going to get my novel done if I have to wait for you three nights a week before I eat my supper?”
“But you used to say you didn't enjoy it unless I was there,” she reproached: “you don't care for me like you did at first. That's what I get for giving myself to you. You're beginning to get tired of me. If I'd held you off the way I've done with all the others—”
“O-oh,” returned an irritated Arcy, “it's because I do care. It just makes me wild to think a fellow like that has the power to 'command your presence' just like a king. . . .”
“But think of what the jewelry alone is worth, darling dear,” the girl pleaded, slipping down to the hearth rug and resting her head on his knee. “Suppose I'm out of a job. Or you are. Or if either of us is sick—or anything; we'd have these. And he's going to give me a big cabochon ruby some time this month. I know his little game. He's getting ready to tell me he's got to marry that Hefflefinger girl. How did you find out about her, Arcy? You never told me.”
“It wasn't printed because old man Hefflefinger owns stock in one of the big newspaper syndicates; and he doesn't want the engagement announced until everything's settled. Those big newspaper owners swap favors, suppressing news if it isn't too big. The lawyers are fighting it out. Leeminster's attorneys want too much: the marriage settlement, you know. Leeminster won't take any chances with papa-in-law's generosity. He knows the viewpoint of the plain people about a husband who lives on his wife. He's seen too many things happen to other men in his set. The purse strings make the monkey jump: if the wife holds 'em, he must jump her way. Can't get anything to spend unless he explains what it's for. And where would he have the money to buy you cabochon rubies then? He's only getting it now—at loan shark interest—on the strength of his coming marriage.”
“He was telling me that tonight,” said Toya indignantly. “He thought he was being very smart—said there was a rich girl who wanted to marry him, and he was letting people think he was going to, because the moneylenders would let him have lots of money that way. I wasn't to let on he was going to marry me. That would ruin everything.”
“You bet it would,” agreed Arcy: “the girl, of course, is going into this with her eyes open: money for social position. But she's making her old-fashioned father think she really loves Leeminster, and that he loves her. Only his people won't recognize the match and call on her unless Leeminster's put on his feet and made independent. The old man swallowed that, somehow—so the society woman who gives our society reporter his inside stuff says—another broke aristocrat. But if Pop Hefflefinger ever found out Leeminster didn't care for his daughter, didn't intend to be any more of a husband to her than he could help—Lord! Pop's after a grandson and heir, and if he thought he would get one only so that the kid's parents could lay hands on the rest of his fortune, the thing 'ud be o-double-f, off. . . . Why, what's the matter, Kittens?”—for Toya had begun with a ripple, ending with a spasm of laughter.
“Suppose he saw the letters Tubby wrote me,” she finally elucidated. Arcy nodded. No glimmering of what he was to do had as yet lit up the matter of those letters.
“Well, I should say so,” he agreed. “I was just thinking something like that tonight while I was waiting for you. About twelve girls in evening clothes without any wraps or anything came in and sat down with some fellow for a while and then went off again. Lazard explained to me about the door in the wall: told me who the girls were. I got to thinking. The men those girls had left in Curate's all had big fortunes. Not one could afford to get his name in the papers with that of a chorus girl. Yet, when one throws a girl down—as they always do—if the girl tries to get anything they call it blackmail, and then lawyers scare her so she shuts up and forgets it—”
“Serves her right for giving in to a man she doesn't love,” yawned Toya, uninterested in the affairs of her own sex. “You'd have done the same if you hadn't met me,” accused Arcy. She denied this indignantly; and the colloquy veered to more personal grounds, became a minor quarrel. Which ended as such affairs generally do in interchanges of endearments quite too silly for a place on a printed page—even in a day of Indianapolis fiction less mentally nourishing than the confectionery it endeavors to imitate.

### VIII

Arcy found himself wakeful that night, so in that enchanted realm just preceding slumber, where imagination becomes reality, saw himself addressing the young men to visit whom those twelve girls had come through the door in the wall. He did not fancy their lack of character in permitting the girls to worship both Eros and Mammon; but his own complaisance in the matter of Toya's suppers with Leeminster led him to make excuses for them. He saw himself urging them to advise the girls to save tangible evidence in the shape of letters, telegrams, cancelled cheques and so forth and with them regain their independence; arranging the matter through a lawyer's hands in a perfectly legal way. It was then that there occurred to him the significance of Leeminster's letters to Toya: letters written during the “try-out” of “The Bonbon Girl,” to various outland theaters. They had already served one purpose: reading them had convinced Arcy of the absolute innocence of Toya's relationship, for Leeminster wrote as respectfully as to a girl of his own class.
Arcy, who possessed an uncommon memory, now visualized one or two. They were the sort of letters any girl would be proud to receive from a fiancé. . . . Arcy chuckled hugely. Toya could have what he coveted for her: a finishing course at the Paris conservatory, emerging therefrom polished, accomplished, possessed of savoir faire, fit to adorn the stage of any country. With her beauty she need never return to America unless she chose.
It was all he could do to keep from awakening the girl and acquainting her with her good fortune. But, he reflected, it was as well to be silent even to her: she would find it difficult to avoid crowing over her triumph, surrounded each night by envious, or admiring, acquaintances, ten girls in her dressing room alone. No, it would wait until the announcement of Miss Hefflefinger's engagement to Mr. J. Tubman Leeminster. Then the bombshell, before Leeminster could play his hand—which Arcy imagined would be to tell Toya he was marrying “Mae” only to gain the huge settlement; after which he would behave so badly that she would be forced to divorce him—“and—then—sweetheart . . .” Meanwhile, although a cruel fate withheld his name from her for a brief space, were they not truly one in divine sight? . . . Not original, truly, but it has convinced millions, will convince millions more, is convincing thousands at this moment. To Leeminster, it meant the capture of the quarry or giving up the chase.
Early on the following day Arcy visited Toya's apartment, took Leeminster's letters from their all-too-evident hiding place, and in her name hired a safe deposit vault for their safe-keeping. Toya, at her singing lesson, knew nothing of it; nor did he inform her: even went so far as not to mention again to her the possibilities the girls who used the door in the wall were overlooking. But, finding this topic ensured attention at Noel's, he spoke upon it many times for the edification of Lazard and others of the patrons: his visits to their rendezvous being another explanation not vouchsafed Toya. Her dislike for Lazard permitted no common sense view of their acquaintance. Now and again, Arcy had an uneasy sentience as to the superiority of her intuition over his logic—in this matter at least.
But it was not difficult to understand the attraction Lazard had for such as Arcy. There were many others not of Subterranea to be found in his company: besides the reporters for theatrical journals, several actors, a poet, a writer of popular songs.
In none did he inspire that friendship which is the wonder of women. None were solicitous of his welfare, none would have placed their purse at his disposal in misfortune. They sought Noel's as audiences seek out that theater advertised as having the most amusing play. Lazard worked hard for their laughter; like the comedian over the way who was paid his weight in gold yearly, he came to his evening's performance rehearsed and ready.
To the craftsman in humor, who must grind out laughs by the yard, Lazard's method would have been apparent. His was not spontaneous humor: he worked by formula, was amusing only on certain subjects. A detective couldn't catch a cold: couldn't find the third rail in the Subway: couldn't locate a Saratoga trunk in a hall bedroom, and so on, ad infinitum, regarding the stupidity of detectives, a mere reversal of the average belief in their astuteness. As for thieves, another class popularly supposed to be clever, a thief couldn't steal a bunch of grass from Central Park, or a handful of water out of the East River without getting an icicle down his back; or a swindler couldn't get a biscuit for a barrel of flour. Philanthropists wouldn't give the Lord a prayer; were closer than the next second. A woman who aimed at society—he was referring to Mrs. Carolus Lang at the time—“couldn't get into the Haymarket”—a disorderly resort—“with a letter from the Pope.” . . . The latter phrase yields a second key to his method: an irreverence that stopped at nothing. There were no sacred things to Milton Lazard. Once, when in straits more desperate than usual, he had deemed it a rare jest to send to his old mother a telegram announcing his own demise, asking for funds to save the body from the Potter's Field, signing the name of a friend who received the money and who shared in the spoils—the mother, on an annuity, having hitherto refused to pauperize herself further after yielding for years to his demands. He told this story as a chef d'œuvre. But it was not until after Lazard's betrayal of him that Arcy subjected his wit to analysis, discovering its mechanics. For the few weeks of their acquaintance, he hardened his heart to any inner whisperings that hinted the acquaintance was a mistake. And Lazard played his fish like the veteran angler he was. Such tales as his imposition upon his mother were reserved for other ears. He knew Arcy's limitations—as he would have described them—and stayed within them; for he was anxious that the reporter should be his friend.
Lazard was, even then, contemplating marriage with Mrs. Carolus Lang: the doctors' reports from the Cannes chateau tending toward the belief that the veteran financier would not live out the year. But before Lazard could be married again, he needed money that he might divorce the concert hall singer he had married away back in the days of his youth: had married because she was just then the rage of mining camps and earned a large salary, and because she would not yield it to him in any other way. But she had soon been supplanted by a younger and better-looking woman. Now she was singing in the moving picture houses, and needed money herself. She had written, in answer to his question, that she would divorce him if he paid the expenses and gave her a thousand dollars. He had not yet the courage to approach Mrs. Lang for a loan. After succeeding in impressing her that he loved her unselfishly, he was not yet sure enough of her to dare arouse possible suspicions that he was mercenary. And Lily's earnings only sufficed for expenses.
It was in Arcy that he saw his salvation: the new jewelry Toya was displaying seemed to Lazard but the natural concomitant of cash she must be receiving. He judged Arcy by his own standards and could not believe that he would fail to profit by his wealthy rival's infatuation. Himself, he would soon have driven Leeminster away by his greediness. “Never mind the junk,” he would have advised her; “say you need money to pay the mortgage on the old home—he'll fall for anything.” Which was the reason Lily Lamotte kept her admirers so short a time.
Lazard had not the foresight—even in his unpleasant occupation—to play the waiting game. Like most potential criminals, he was too eager for immediate rewards.
His resolution to ask Arcy for half of the necessary money for his divorce—he had some of his own, laid by without Lily's knowledge—was hastened by the events immediately following the announcement of Leeminster's engagement. For, on that same day, Toya's lawyers approached Leeminster's with photographs of the letters, the announcement of a breach of promise suit to be instituted, and an inquiry as to whether their client wanted to compromise. Leeminster had made frantic efforts to reach Toya for days preceding this announcement; but Arcy had deemed it wise that she should plead sickness, absenting herself from the company and retiring to Atlantic City—so that Leeminster might imagine the suit was brought because of imagined unfaithfulness. Whereas, if she would only give him “'a chance to explain . . .”
As he failed to locate her, either before or after the announcement, and her lawyers were obdurate: either he must compromise within two days or the suit would be filed—he compromised. Knowing old Hefflefinger's distaste for the engagement, anyway, the absolute certainty of his fierce denunciation and the severance of all connections, once those letters were published, he had recourse to the twenty per cent men again and paid over one-tenth of the hundred thousand demanded.
Needless to relate, these latter developments were not recorded in the public press; and all might have gone well had Toya been able to restrain the delight of her realized ambitions. But she was, as has been stated, in the company of many other girls each evening: ten dressing room mates, all of whom she considered her dearest friends. They knew, of course, that she was giving her two weeks' notice, was departing for Paris; and as they pestered her with questions as to her financial fairy, presently under the seal of confidence—she being wild with desire to confide in somebody, anyhow—she told several. And Lily Lamotte carried a bitter wail to Milton Lazard.
“. . . always telling how smart you are, and what have you ever done for me? And running that Arcy down. And look what he's done for her. And he hasn't made her cheap and common doing it, either, although you say they're both liars. Well, if they are, nobody knows it. She can hold her head up. And she'll come back and be a star after studying in Paris, and what'll I be? A tramp just like Iam now. Oh, I wish I'd listened to her. Everybody always said I was out of my class being with
“You bet you were,” he returned savagely. “But you used a stepladder, not a diving bell. You were so close to the ground when I met you, you couldn't kick a duck in the stomach.” He had caught up his hat and coat and now slammed the door behind him, divided between elation and resentment: overjoyed that Arcy should have no excuse now for refusing his request, hating the reporter bitterly for having succeeded where he had failed—he the infinitely superior man. He had lost caste in the eyes of the girl who worshiped him: a state of affairs that might terminate in his losing Lily before she ceased to be necessary.
But his egotism did not permit him to admit even the possibility of Arcy's superiority. He laid it to a pestilential luck, growling viciously at the man who was to benefit him: “a half-wit if ever there was one,” he told himself, remembering Arcy's “narrow-mindedness” which compelled him to delete some most delectable details from his favorite stories. “Just a lucky little sucker,” he added, and regained the stature lost by Lily's harangue.
He was again the patronizing critic of the universe when he entered Noel's. Arcy was not there. It was past theater time and, since Leeminster had been eliminated, he came only while waiting for Toya to finish her performance, over an hour before. Lazard repaired to other and more seemly restaurants; but the pair were to be found in none of them. And then he committed a grave error of judgment: he should have remembered Toya's intense dislike for him, should have realized Arcy would not advertise his acquaintance with him, Lazard, lest she hear of it. But now that the money seemed so near, he could not wait: he plunged on downtown and rang Arcy's doorbell. The door was opened by Toya, who, with the sleeves of her shirtwaist uprolled, was assisting in packing. She viewed Arcy with disapproval when he welcomed his visitor.
“We're sailing day after tomorrow,” he added. “The Chartic. Excuse me if I go on working, will you? Have a drink and a cigarette, or a cigar—they're all in that little cellaret over there.” Toya had not greeted him; nor did she. Lazard began to realize he had chosen an inauspicious time and place. “Didn't know you were busy, old pal,” he said, taking up his hat again. “Meet me tomorrow and have lunch, will you?” But a glance at Toya's mutinous face told him he had again erred and that, as she was free at that hour, she would make it too uncomfortable for Arcy to keep the engagement. Therefore—
“I'd like to speak to you a moment now—in private,” he said. Strangely enough, Toya seemed to disregard this entirely: even when Arcy excused himself she did not turn. He led Lazard into the bedroom and closed the door. Simulating stress and suppressed excitement, Lazard told a story of dire need: a loan that was being called on a piece of property worth ten times the mortgage value—he would give him a duly certified mortgage on it tomorrow. Meanwhile his postdated cheque would guarantee Arcy against loss.
There is no doubt that Arcy would have refused; but he would have found excuses for doing so: money tied up just then, would arrange it next day—thereafter avoiding Lazard until sailing day—such moral cowards are men. But he was saved the lie. Toya had thrown open the door, her gesture dramatic. “I'd like to see you lend any money to that poor thing!” she said; then in a fulmination of scorn: “I thought you were up to some tricks so I listened. What do you take us for, Milton Lazard? Think everybody's a softy like poor Lily? I'd rather throw it in the river than lend it to you. You're so smart, why don't you get some of your own? Smart!! Yes, to silly Lilys who don't know anything!”
Black hate bubbled in Lazard's mouth; his eyes burned. “I guess if that Leeminster knew what you doped up on him, it might cost you more'n I asked for,” he said thickly. “They call that blackmail.” At which Arcy, hitherto annoyed with Toya, shifted sides.
“So that's the kind of a big rat you are, eh?” he asked. “That closes your act with me.” As Lazard clenched his fists, MacTea caught up the firetongs. In these strained positions they remained a moment: until Lazard, with an ugly laugh—for he had thought of something from which firetongs were no protection—turned and strode rapidly from the room.
The waiting taxicab, the cost of which would have been but a drop in the ocean of what he had expected to bear away, now irritated him beyond measure; so, observing that the chauffeur dozed on his seat, Lazard, closing the house door noiselessly, hurried away. The same malice that had caused the misshapen jester to visit poisoners for potions of red toadstool, which, dropped into the drink of the men-at-arms, would punish them with cruel griping pains for their sport at his expense, now seethed in his descendant. That Slavonic servant girl to insult him! That poor little lucky sucker to call him a rat!! Why hadn't he beaten their heads in—he could have wrested those tongs away easily! Not willing to admit to cowardice, he told himself it was because he had a better way to pay his score. He grinned, he sneered, he went into ecstasies of gloating . . . and, long past midnight, after visiting three clubs, he found Mr. J. Tubman Leeminster; who received him with almost as distant an air (Lazard's exaggerated clothes betrayed him) as had the club porter. Which, threatening Lazard's self-estimation as it did, almost ruined his object by sending rudeness to his tongue tip. He controlled himself, however, and spoke without emotion. . . . If someone had deliberately tricked Mr. Leeminster, had repaid his favors with ingratitude, entering into a most iniquitous plot against him . . . was it worth Mr. Leeminster's while to know? He referred to Miss Thiodolf—to cut short a long story. Leeminster darkened. What did he mean?
“She never had any intention of marrying you. She was in love with another fellow. She only wanted what you could give her; was going to throw you over anyway? If you could prove this, could you get back that blackmail money?”
“Blackmail?” thundered Leeminster.
“What else?” asked Lazard.
A moment of silence: then, unable any longer to command the venom that his brain was spewing into his mouth, Lazard became vicious. “She had a fellow long before she ever met you. She didn't aim so high as you before. Any kind of a man would do.” So full of hate was he, he had to shut his lips tightly lest he betray himself. It is not certain he did not believe he was speaking truth. Were that heavy-headed guy and that heavy-footed girl superior to him and his? Getting himself into better control, he piled up disgraceful details for Leeminster to hear: realistic and convincing details culled from ugly personal experience. And then added stories read in sensational newspapers: a drugged drink, a promise of marriage, a horrible awakening . . .
He had seen how solemnly the public believed such tales: how effective they were in arousing editorial indignation. Himself, he had not found it worth while to angle for innocent girls: poverty had already done the work drugs and promises of marriage were supposed to do; but poverty did not make melodramatic reading, and it shifted the blame onto the shoulders of those upright ones bent on suppressing “the traffic.” Women who plead poverty for an excuse did not get the sympathy, attention, widespread publicity of those who sobbed of lurid lures. Lazard knew many girls who had discovered that the easiest way to escape legal penalties was to disclose harrowing details of organized “cadet” bands of which they were victims. He, even more unscrupulous, had no hesitation in adding anything that would put Leeminster in a rage, that would ensure extreme measures.
“A white slave?” gasped that young gentleman; whose taxicab accounts and jewelry had made a few—as the phrase has come to be used. But he had done so quite legitimately—for his royal pleasure: and he was not for a moment to be confused with those abandoned wretches who did it for a livelihood.
Lazard was overjoyed. “A white slave,” he confirmed, rejoicing at his acumen in adding the effectual melodrama. “A white slave, that's what.” He was of his ancestor's crafty coward's intuition: had seen Leeminster would not be receptive to any evil tales of Toya: therefore Arcy should suffer for both. “And that's the fellow who'll be spending your money in Europe in a week or so!”
Leeminster started up, kicked over an ottoman, stamped noisily about the private cardroom. Exhausting his vocabulary, he sputtered: in wild wrath, he banged his fist on a little green-topped table which, being collapsible, collapsed. To hear him one would have imagined he had given Toya the purest, most unselfish devotion. If, almost, he deceived Lazard, certainly he deceived himself. He was Sir Galahad the Spotless, rescuer of maidens from monsters, Perseus arming himself to save an Andromeda and slay a dragon. One might have believed he was superior to wounded vanity, hurt pride, the loss of money, the desire for revenge. For the moment, it seemed Miss Hefflefinger's fortune might go hang: mattered only the rescuing of “that poor little girl.” . . .
Lazard knew when the first fury had spent itself Leeminster would return to sanity; realizing on the way that no steps could be taken which would jeopardize the announced alliance. Which would forbid any prosecution for blackmail, even for obtaining money under false pretenses. The blacker the girl's character the less able he would be to explain satisfactorily those letters. This became apparent to Leeminster after a moment of calm consideration. Then as violently as before, “I'll half murder that blackguard,” he breathed heavily. “Where can I find him? Wait till I go home and get a horsewhip. Then you just point him out to me. I'll settle him.”
But Lazard, having won, was suave. “And get your name in the papers and have the whole story come out? Let the law settle him. Oh, I know”—this to Leeminster's impatient wave of the hand—“I know. Not by any lawsuit or prosecution. Isn't this fellow a danger to the community? And haven't I seen you around a lot with the District Attorney?” He paused, seeing he had Leeminster's attention. “Now's where I come in—I don't pretend to be doing all this for nothing: you wouldn't believe me, anyway. I need a thousand. If I show you how to put MacThyndall away for two years without mixing your name in it at all, you'd give me a thousand, wouldn't you?”
For a moment Leeminster did not answer: sat sneering, staring with fishy eyes. “I suppose you're another one just like him. You've been friends and he did something to you—eh?” Lazard, crushing down a desire to close those cold, superior eyes, rose and, having studied human nature over the poker table, and knowing the value of bluff, made for the door. Leeminster stopped him. “I don't suppose it matters why,” he grumbled grudgingly. “Set a thief to catch a thief. All right. If he goes away you get your thousand. You'll have to take my word,” he added, anticipating correctly the request on Lazard's lips: a bitter blow to the parasite, unprovided for this, having been too occupied with his hatred to think of it: imagining the money paid down that night.
But his brain was quick enough in such matters. “If you don't pay me, I'll let MacThyndall know the whole business anonymously, and, as I won't figure in it, you'll get into trouble,” he said insolently.
“I didn't expect one of your stripe to understand a gentleman may do anything but break his word—even to a blackguard,” was Leeminster's contemptuous retort. “Go ahead.”
“Well, then,” said Lazard, after a sulky pause, “there's a door between Curate's and Noel's. While you fellows are in Curate's with these girls, they make some excuse and slip into Noel's to tell the fellows there when they can get rid of you.”
He enjoyed seeing Leeminster wince, regained some of his enthusiasm. “She's not the only one. There's fifty or sixty girls do that. This MacThyndall's been talking to them, telling them to go off somewhere and get you fellows to send 'em telegrams and letters so's they'd have something to hold you up with when you try to throw them down. That's wholesale blackmail, ain't it? If the District Attorney lets him get away with this, there'll be ten cases like yours a month. You fellows won't dare to have Broadway girls at all. And the D. A.'s one of your bunch. Well, do you know how the D. A. or the chief handles a dangerous guy that they can't get anything on? They 'frame' him, drop a gun in his pocket: then they have some strong arm guy pick a fight with him, and plant the gat while they're fighting, lose the other fellow and arrest the one that's framed for. When he's searched before they lock him up, they find the cannon. Pretty neat, eh? I'd like to have a dollar for every fellow they've put away like that.”
Forgetting his grievance, Leeminster clenched his fist, almost lashed out with it at the malicious, self-satisfied, grinning face. Remembering, he transferred his hatred to the one who had mulcted him. “Will you tell Mr. Knipe what you told me?” he asked sourly. “About that door between Curate's and Noel's and how this fellow's been advising you and your fine friends to wholesale blackmail?”
“If my name's kept out of it, you bet I will,” was Lazard's savage response. “I'd like to see that guy's face when they find the gun.”
“Come on then,” said Leeminster. “We'll catch him if we hurry.” He did not find it necessary to state that the official sought played poker at the River Club until a very late hour. Nor did he wait for the porter to summon a taxicab and receive his legitimate commission both ways. Which gave rise to grave doubts in the mind of that functionary whether or not Mr. Leeminster was really a gentleman.

### IX

Were this tale told in the year of the events recorded, widespread indignation would greet the statement that as Lazard conjectured so did it come to pass. But much calcium light has flooded the dark places of punitive departments since the days when the center of the theatrical belt was presided over by the Bennett owls and the statue of Horace Greeley, since hansoms waited at stage doors and their occupants might make merry until dawn. Exposure has followed exposure. To discover what sort were they who could go about the business of assassination in motor cars, the searchlight has soared beyond the clay feet of Manhattan and found its face of brass. Other than one who protects the shame of high places now rules in the office of District Attorney: his hand has helped turn upward the searchlight. But the man who played late at the River Club had personal reasons for wishing to see the sport of kings protected. It was enough that there were rude rascals who poached upon the preserves of gentlemen; but when one bade them stand and deliver besides, an example must be made that would strike terror into his like.
It had been largely through this gentleman's activities that the statute legalizing common law marriages—that is, when a woman had lived a certain number of years with a man she was entitled to the name and privileges of a wife—had been repealed, to save from annoying mésalliances many sons of the rich who had mistresses. Now, when he heard of the activities of Arcy MacTea, he voiced a belief that, should this man go unpunished, here was a danger quite as great: gentlemen soon would be unable to bait traps with luxury and cease supplying the bait, at their pleasure. It was impossible not to do or say something compromising even if one wrote no letters. Which, like that dastardly common law marriage statute, was a direct blow at the liberty the common people had fought to give men of birth and fortune. Were prerogatives gained in a Revolution to be endangered? He guessed not!
But he also did not guess at the fact that he was to bring about his ears a nest of hornets which up to now had been disguised as honey-giving bees. The newspapers had hitherto supported him under the impression that one of independent fortune would be more honest than a professional politician. But, when Arcy, imprisoned at police headquarters, had sworn many oaths as to the outrage perpetrated upon him and had convinced the star reporter of his paper he had been victimized to please somebody—prudently antedating Toya's breach of promise, Jim North had flown to his city editor. The indignant two had sought the managing editor, the militant three had found the owner, and the furious four had called upon the judge who was to set Arcy's bail on the following morning. It happened to be a judge who was well aware of the Bluebeard chamber in the District Attorney's edifice of apparent rectitude, and, as that person had once declined—seeing no gain—to soften the prosecution of a friend of the judge's friend's friend, that dignitary now saw the chance of having that chamber unlocked. But they were of the same party, and even if the unlocking were done by him, he must still keep the secret for the party's sake. So, instead of assuring the furious four that the evidence against Arcy would be found insufficient to hold him, he suggested that, if he held him on small bail, Mr. MacThyndall could take his trip to Europe and help represent his paper in Paris, as had been arranged—“skipping” his bail if necessary; while the newspaper's lawyers investigated his case and found the Bluebeard chamber. Which suited the irate newspaper owner well enough; this same District Attorney had not shown sufficient gratitude for the journalistic assistance that had elected him.
Thus it was, to the extreme indignation of the District Attorney—for his assistant detailed on the case had done all possible to impress the judge that now was the time to show the lawless that the new law about weapons was going to be enforced—Arcy was freed at so small an expense to his bondsman that one would have supposed the new law was not yet in force. But when he heard who the bondsman was, and that Robert C. MacThyndall was the R. C. MacT. whose initials met his eye each morning at the breakfast table—true Arcy had given his occupation as “newspaper man” but that was a favorite evasion of the sons of Subterranea—the District Attorney's wrath against Mr. J. Tubman Leeminster was terrible to behold; that gentleman, hastily summoned, having arrived, he was restrained from doing him an injury only by the fact that Leeminster was the larger of the two.
“A fine trick you've played on me,” he whispered shrilly, in the accents of a scream. “Why didn't you tell me that fellow was a reporter? You let me think he was a grafter—”
“So he was,” said Leeminster: “I don't care if he was a reporter or not. . . .”
“You don't care?” bellowed the District Attorney. “Why, I'd sooner arrest a Fourteenth Street politician than a reporter on the Argus. Scarthwaite'll never let up on me now; and when he starts for anybody, they're gone. He just hounds you and hounds you and hounds you. I've got to live like a Trappist monk or get out. You've ruined me, Tubby Leeminster.”
So it proved. A year later there was a new District Attorney: Leeminster's friend was not even nominated.

### X

That year was spent both profitably and pleasantly by Mr. and Mrs. R. C. MacThyndall—married since Arcy, by the great luck of Toya knowing the girl from a former show, got the full details of her suicide, which involved the heir of one of America's large fortunes. His wife had long known of his liaison but had permitted it because she was freer married than divorced. But the man had left the former showgirl to follow another woman of fashion, and, this being one of the few cases where the girl really cared for the man, not the money, Toya's friend took poison. But, before doing so, she had seen Toya in Paris and had told of this intention should Arthur refuse to return from St. Moritz to their London apartment; and, when the news of her death came, Arcy gave his chief a story to cable that with its developments held the front pages of the New York newspapers for a week or more; forcing the wife to institute divorce proceedings, the corespondent the woman for whom Arthur deserted Toya's friend. All of which belongs to another history which shall some day be related.
Arcy had learned sufficient of the world not to tell of the lucky chance which had given him the details in a lace napkin. He invented, instead, a series of imaginary sleuthings which redounded to his resourcefulness; and the Paris correspondent had urged earnestly that Mr. Scarthwaite increase Arcy's honorarium. Which was not needed when the proprietor of the Argus heard it was the younger man who had given the paper the “exclusive” which had made all the other Manhattan dailies hold their injured noses.
Then it was that Arcy had yielded to the oft repeated request of Toya that their union be legitimatized. He had held off, hitherto, for a reason that, strangely enough, was an unselfish one. When first he had met Toya, she was the usual loud-voiced, ignorant chorus girl, considering herself, with neither birth, breeding nor any save a rudimentary education, the equal of all, the superior of most; brought to this pert and egotistical belief by a false system of public school training, plus the attention and compliments every pretty, youthful girl receives from stage door hangers-on. Meeting men with famous names and finding them bores or beasts, it is not strange such girls should fail to believe in a superior class.
Arcy had changed all that: since she loved him, she feared him and respected his attainments; was desirous of awakening in him more than the cool, kind affection which was all he gave her—openly. She had set herself to win his admiration, to make herself all he seemed to think a woman should be. Otherwise, she would have dropped Leeminster immediately; but she needed money for her music, her education generally. Moreover, she wished to dress as did those Fifth Avenue women whose chic, until then, she had not found so evident as that of her sister showgirls; and to save, after the thrifty Slavonic fashion, for summers of no work and many rehearsals. Then, gradually, through his constant mockery of her favorite fiction, she developed a taste for good literature; which, abetted by professional matinees at the better class theaters where she saw English comedies acted by actors familiar with the usages of drawing rooms, gave her knowledge of a class apart from the noisy spectacular brass band set whose escapades and scandal fill the Sunday supplements; a class impossible to respect and easy to emulate in dress and manners, which, unfortunately, with Toya as with so many American girls of the working classes, is the only aristocracy they know.
But, since Toya had learned that there were people not distinguished as to wealth nor willing to sacrifice honor to achieve it—people familiar with the best in books, art and music, she had set up an ideal, and, though she had been slow to achieve it while she remained in New York, she needed only removal from the tawdry life she must lead in dressing rooms and restaurants to begin in earnest. Add to that Paris, the example of fellow students better educated, of better families than her own, the respect, almost veneration, for art and literature that exists in Paris even among the lower classes, and the society of Arcy's new friends, painters, authors, correspondents and the like, who wasted no time on banalities—and Toya within was soon almost worthy of Toya without. And as she had all the dark mysterious beauty of the Slavs, whose women's eyes are starry and mysterious even when they are thinking of what they will have for dinner; yet was without the Slavonic clumsiness of body, having had a mother of the Czechs, whose grace of motion make their national dances too difficult for any but themselves—to say her mental attainments could ever come within speaking distance of her physical charms would be possible only to one of those who write bonbon fiction or “primitive” plays: in which total changes of character are accomplished between acts and in single chapters.
Say, rather, they came within shouting distance, megaphone distance; which was quite sufficient for so pretty a girl. At all events, she had learned to know good art and good manners if not to like them; and Arcy having selected her clothes for so long, she had developed a secondary instinct as to what suited her type; and now, in a plain, closely fitting skirt cut like a sword scabbard, with a narrow-shouldered coat, long-lined in the back and sharply curved and cut away at the waistline, displaying her narrow waist and rounded torso in a tightly fitting semi-waistcoat of brocaded stuff, a long jabot of the softest and most expensive lace falling over it, she looked like the lady of a seventeenth century Royal Hunt; so aristocratically slender that she seemed tall, her small Greek-featured face like a vivid little flower on a long, graceful stem. It is a trick few women learn: to disregard entirely what are called the fashions, to find a style suited to their type, thereafter adhering to it. It is the device that distinguishes the successful beauty from the merely beautiful one—and is the only thing known to stir Paris, familiar to contempt with the picked beauties of the world who come to sell their charms in the highest market.
In Paris, then, wherever Toya went, she was followed by admiring, eager eyes. A Russian grand duke had his secretary seek her out to ask for an introduction. An English peer with a famous racing stable named for her a horse that was to win the Grand Prize. She did not dare walk alone on the Rivoli, the Paix, or any principal street: someone was sure to stop his motor and come to walk by her. Here a beautiful woman does not need to be on the stage to attract widespread attention: she has only to be where news is known before it reaches the newspapers—at race courses, restaurants and revues; to all of which Arcy's occupation as correspondent took him, and where he soon became famous—for the constant cavalier of a beauty is a man of no small importance in the gay world of Paris. Toya's beauty was better than all his letters of introduction. Without the slightest effort, he met all the grandees whom to know is to know the news before it is printed. The official correspondent of his paper had never enjoyed such intimacy with the famous and the wealthy. As it was soon found that Toya was not allowed to come without him, Arcy was invited to many suppers, shootings, coaching parties and other divertissements of English dukes, American millionaires, South American and Russian nabobs. So that Toya had not to argue, as in the past, when she brought up the marriage question. After his increase in salary, she had only to suggest.
Then, as delighted with her new dignity as a kitten with a new bow of ribbon, Toya no longer felt it a necessity to be present at every race meeting. She was seen seldomer in the Café de Paris and more often at symphony concerts and Wagnerian performances; and her teachers at the Conservatoire noted an increased progress in her studies. Being now assured that the man she wanted was tied to her securely unless she herself willed it otherwise, the question of sex was settled in her mind, and she no longer found it necessary to remind him continually, by making fresh conquests, of her desirability in other men's eyes. And, as ever since they had left America he had forbidden her to accept any presents but flowers, candy or books, she could see no further use in submitting to that boredom that came from their compliments and lovemaking. She now concentrated upon her career with all the extra energy hitherto expended in flirtation; and the only men she allowed to escort her were Arcy's friends and those who were interested in civilized conversation—one of whom had been for some little while that eminent financier, Carolus Lang, temporarily master of his health and an occasional visitor to Paris.
Originally she had been directed by Arcy to use all her powers to persuade some friend of Lang's to introduce her to him upon one of those flying trips; and, once met, to exert herself to the utmost to gain his friendship and confidence—all for a reason with which Toya more than sympathized: vengeance for the treachery of Milton Lazard.

### XI

Of Carolus Lang this history is too confined to treat with that detail due his remarkable character. There has been one who has filled near upon half a thousand such pages as this, yet got no farther than the fourth decade of Lang's life. To bring him past the sixth, when he comes into this tale, would require many thousand more: even to picture him adequately, transferring to paper that sense of power which he radiated, conveying that commingling of rapacity and philanthropy, scorn of the public yet desire for applause, hatred of sham yet love of intrigue, militant money making yet a devotion to all that is best in the arts and sciences so absorbing that he desired to share it with all the world and propagate it for posterity—all this would necessitate a lapse so long that interest would be lost in those minor persons who are our major ones.
Arcy had watched the reports of his health like a loyal subject the bulletins of the physicians attending a dying monarch: that is, since receiving the result of the investigation of Scarthwaite, owner of the Argus, which had resulted in the inclusion of Milton Lazard's name. Well for Leeminster had his haste not deprived that commissionaire of his commission. Arcy had given them the Leeminster clue, and it had been an easy task to ascertain his habits and to trace him on the night previous to Arcy's arrest.
Had the club porter requisitioned Leeminster's cab, the incident of Lazard's call might have been confused with the hundred other calls of non-members upon members that make up part of any commissionaire's average week. But the fact of Leeminster brushing that porter and his legitimate commission aside to enter deliberately the cab of a notorious nighthawk, had limned every detail of the rencontre in the non-fading colors of indignation upon the disappointed porter's mind. He remembered Lazard's name, Leeminster's order that the caller be sent to that private cardroom reserved for confidential communications, the exact duration of that particular one—everything necessary to confirm Arcy's suspicion that Lazard had been rad instigator of the law's assault upon him.
And for this malignant treachery Lazard was going to pay dearly; that Arcy swore: Toya also. Her hatred for the man turned her into a little fury whenever his name was mentioned. Alone, she had been impotent: now that Arcy hated him, too, so confident was she in her chosen one, Lazard should bitterly regret each separate insult about the size of Miss Thiodolf's feet. She had never been conscious of this failing until he had loudly proclaimed it. Now she was forever conscious of it, and spent much time devising boots and pumps not so short-vamped as to be chorus-girly, yet that reduced the size of the extremities they covered to the perfection of other parts of her body. And, whenever the newest device hurt her, which was often, she thought vengefully of her lost comfort and peace of mind; and, if the requital of Lazard's treachery slumbered in Arcy, she awoke it. Next to their future, this was their absorbing topic. Ways and means suggested themselves; from such a primitive plan as having Lazard set upon by Chatham Square Apaches and beaten out of all recognizance (Toya's) to the Machiavellian methods of Arcy, too artistic to succeed anywhere except inside book covers. Even those nights when some success should have made them serenely happy were spoiled by thoughts of a swaggering blackguard still reigning over his table at Noel's, making ragtime entertainers secondary attractions, continuing to be quoted in theatrical sheets for witty sayings or doughty lies about past adventures. At such mental pictures, Arcy would champ his teeth and kick at the bedcovers: his future would be forgotten. A genuine hatred is like a great mosquito forever buzzing about the ears; until it is slain, it is a wholesale poisoner of days and nights—even of purple ones. Nights especially; for like Macbeth it murders sleep.
During the early days of their exile, Carolus Lang had remained very low. The physicians of a king and an emperor were at the small villa at Villefranche into which Lang had been carried when he was stricken, and which his secretary, Corrie, had hastily hired, paying an extravagant price to get its occupants to go elsewhere. About this time an opera singer just arrived from America told Arcy that Lazard was wearing a magnificent stickpin, a miniature of Joardin's great statue “Io,” created by the sculptor himself for the great financier, his earliest patron—a historic thing because it was the only one Joardin ever did. Carolus Lang must be very near his end: even his scatter-brained wife would not dare make such a gift unless he were; and Lazard must have inspired more than ordinary affection for her to take so great a chance. . . . Arcy's violent comments caused the songstress much amusement.
“How can he marry her? He's got a wife in Salt Lake City. I'm from there myself: started in the same show with her when she was a big favorite. All of us went to the wedding: we all thought she was marrying some millionaire. He talked so big we imagined he was backing the show. But one night we heard them quarreling in the dressing room. He was going to leave her unless she handed him her pay envelope—she mustn't even break the seal. . . . I'd like to see the man who'd dare say a thing like that to me,” she concluded, unconsciously repeating what every woman believes until she is unlucky enough to meet a Lazard and does precisely what she has despised in others.
After Arcy left her, his jubilation faded. Whether Lazard married Mrs. Lang or not, he would have the handling of the Lang millions. Her husband must be warned in time. . . . Arcy hurried home to pack a bag, and catch the Côte d'Azur express to the Riviera. But Toya had news, too: an aviating Brazilian just returned from hydroplane feats off Villefranche had come over to her table at the Volney while she was taking tea; Lang had been seen wheeled about in an invalid chair. If he was out again, the warning could wait. But Lazard's wife?
“Maybe she's dead now, or divorced,” suggested Toya ruefully.
“Divorced,” nodded Arcy; “he'd surely divorce her, knowing his chances with Mrs. Lang for months.” Then, with that genius for deduction that is a concomitant of hatred: “Buy her off—maybe that's what he wanted the thousand for.”
“It is,” said Toya, clapping her hands. “It is. But he didn't get it. Who'd lend him a thousand?”
“If Mrs. Lang's letting him wear that stickpin, fiscal questions aren't bothering him just now. We've got to find out. I'll send a cheque to Bill Byrd and cable to have his Salt Lake agency look into this. Those Byrd men come high but they deliver the goods.”
No proof of Toya's hatred for Lazard could have been stronger than that disclosed by the scene that followed; when she wept for anger because Arcy would not permit her to use a part of Leeminster's ten thousand even to share in the cost of this investigation. But Arcy was wise. They were not married at that time, and he had heard of separations before when the woman spoke loudly of benefits conferred upon the former loved one. And to be identified, even by exaggerated accusation, with the practices of a man he loathed so much, should never be. None of that shaking of the Leeminster plumtree should be utilized for anything except Toya's own luxuries and necessities: not even for anything in which he shared, even to the slightest degree.
In due time the first Byrd report arrived. The Salt Lake agent had referred the search for Mrs. Lazard to the San Francisco branch. Arcy was now advised that she was singing in the Bellefont Theater, “with illustrated slides.” Later, a second report told of her hegira to Reno; and the Reno branch informed him of the hiring of one of those tiny single-story four-roomed bungalows on the outskirts of the Nevada capital; of the filing of an intention to become a resident—after the manner of all desiring a divorce. Such actions foretold a residence of some months at least. . . . “She was poverty-stricken in San Francisco. He distinctly says here that she isn't singing in any of the Reno 'honkatonks.' Someone's supplying the funds,” said Arcy.
“There's only one thing I can't understand,” Toya said, puzzled. “How is it that Lazard has so much money to spend? It isn't like him when he could give her all the evidence she needs to get the divorce right away—on the usual grounds. There's Lily and the girls Lily don't know about.”
“It only proves he's given up trying to get money from anybody else and has gone straight to Mrs. Lang,” elucidated Arcy, after some study. “Catch him acknowledging about Lily to her; even to fake up evidence! Women are suspicious enough anyway”—she gave a little interrupting sniff—“but old women must be the very devil.”
With the news of Lang's increasing good health (telegraphed each day in the Monte Carlo correspondent's newsletter) added to this enforced hiatus at Reno, they could wait. Later, when Lang came to Paris, Toya was introduced the following day; on his next visit, a month later, he dined with them in their little apartment off the Madeleine, Arcy duplicating, if not adding to, the good impression Toya had made. Both received an invitation to Lang's chateau at Cannes, in which he was again in residence. But it was not until their visit there that Arcy felt the auspicious moment for confidences had come. And then he did not make the mistake of endeavoring to hoodwink one so astute by pretending solicitude that was purely unselfish. He gave Lang the history of Toya's dealing with Leeminster and his own tolerance of the parasite. . . . “And isn't that all the more reason?” he finished in a fine frenzy of indignation.
Carolus Lang looked amused but in an ugly fashion. Arcy had known of Lang's long separation from his wife; but he nor anyone had an idea of the intense hatred in which the man held her. Her sins he could have pardoned; he had been as unfaithful as she. But she had made him ridiculous by her choice of rivals. Many had wondered why he had not divorced her. Arcy was the first to learn. For Lang began to explain, in a tired way as though relating a commonplace incident that bored him—

### XII

“I like you, MacThyndall. But I'm not trusting you on that account, but because you won't speak of it for fear of your enemy not getting his deserts. I knew all you've told me months ago. I want that precious pair to hope so that their disappointment will hurt all the more. One of my attorneys saw Mrs. Lazard a week after she came to Reno. She's been getting a good fat substantial sum every week, and will continue to get it so long as she keeps her husband's name—”
He paused to indulge in a satisfied smile. “She's been told to stay in Reno and take their money, too. How about that, my young friend?” Arcy nodded, too amazed to be exultant. “But,” Lang continued, his face clouding, “that won't prevent him from— Wait,” he broke off. “Since you hate him so much, you may be able to think of something I haven't. Ten years ago, even ten months, it would have been easy for me. But this damned affliction of mine has thrown me out of gear. When a man never knows, any time he goes for a walk, whether he'll return alive or drop dead at the first corner, his mind gets atrophied. . . . I'll show you a copy of my will.”
He took it from a pigeonhole in a marquetry desk, an inlaid trifle that had once adorned a palace and was listed in collector's manuals at the price of a small competence. Arcy read amazed: To his . . . “beloved wife, Louisa Marie Lang” . . . after certain legacies to friends and servants had been deducted, he bequeathed the . “income on his entire estate for life.” . . . The younger man repeated this incredulously.
Lang nodded. “And if you can give me some certain way of making her accept it, I'll have a codicil added in your favor. . . .”
Seeing that Arcy was still bewildered, Lang explained; some color came to his cheeks and a sparkle to his eye as he outlined his cherished plans. His money was to be at interest for a certain number of years until, by that weird accumulation known as compound interest, it doubled: then it was to be spent in establishing three institutions for the arts and sciences. Any man or boy of a high degree of intellect who would sign a contract to remain afterward on postgraduate work for five years would be educated free and paid a wage while doing so—these to assist in the work that would be done by the masters of science, who would be induced to come there by providing the colleges with all in the way of instruments, machinery and money that would carry their researches to fruition. One college was to be in America, another in France, a third in Germany; and thereafter, they would be identified with the greatest discoveries for the perpetuation, saving and ameliorating of human life. Nowadays most great scientists were forced to accept funds of self-seeking capitalists, who grew rich over the result of their discoveries. That would no longer be necessary when the Lang colleges flourished: their discoveries would be for the benefit of the world at large. While, as for the arts, any youth or girl with a decided talent for music, painting, sculpture or literature would also receive his education gratis, along with a small income. . . . Arcy stuttered, mumbled, flushed crimson, trying to find words to express his admiration of so great a humanitarian scheme.
Lang smiled wryly. “One must be either a sheep or a wolf in this world,” he said gruffly. “I got tired of being a sheep, so I started to be a wolf. I made the mistake of robbing the rich, though, and they put me in jail as a low person; so when I got out I turned respectable and robbed the poor. I flatter myself, though, that this way I'm doing more good than if they'd spent it themselves. Their grandchildren ought to thank God I did rob them.” He paused. “However, to do this, I need what I've got. I can't afford to give one-third to have a feather-brained peahen hand it over to a ridiculous peacock.”
“One-third—why?” queried Arcy, more puzzled than ever.
“Her dower right: that's the law. Every married woman can get one-third of her husband's entire estate if he dies without making a will. Or she can break any will that leaves her less than that. If she could have divorced me she'd have got that, at least: she couldn't for the same reason I couldn't divorce her: we cancelled out. But if she accepts the will as I've made it—” Once more the ugly smile.
Arcy did some calculating. “But according to your own statement the income from the estate if left at interest will double it in a certain number of years.”
Lang nodded, still smiling. “The executors of the will are scientific gentlemen who want the colleges,” he said, “along with my personal friend and lawyer who's with me heart and soul. My dearly beloved little peahen can't survive me more than ten years the way she's going on. And, when she accepts the will, the executors are instructed to sell the larger part of my holdings and invest in certain safe propositions that won't pay any dividends for anything up to a decade—the new Argentine Railway for instance, that afterward will pay the holders of first mortgages something like thirty per cent on their investment; the Philippines and Hawaiian Trolley Company's another; the new Shantung Railroad—so forth and so on—you may be sure I've studied it out pretty carefully. But don't try to take these things for tips: a hundred thousand is the least such ventures accept: such things aren't open to the small investor—don't need to be. . . . Now do you understand?”
His smile chilled Arcy: it was some time before he stammered out that he did. “You mean her income will be entirely in the hands of the executors—they can make it as little as they choose.”
“Which means all the more toward the Big Scheme—precisely,” returned Lang. “But being a mental lightweight, the peahen would not observe any such possibility. She'd only understand that, if she took her dower right, she'd get one-third as much income. But Lazard would alter all that. He'd want something she could settle on him—and you can't settle annuities. Unless I'm very wrong, his idea is to get possession of her property while she's in love with him, then quit. And, my way, she has no property. So even if he didn't suspect a trick—which he's likely to, knowing how I despise her—he'd insist on the dower right. Think as much as I will,” Lang added wearily, “I can't see any way to prevent him. If he had a criminal record, if he'd done something the law could hold him for—but he's taken as good care of his skin as an old maid. And that's why I say, if you can tell me some way to make her accept that will, down goes your name in it for a good round sum. Think it over,” he added, and pulled a long bellcord, the old-fashioned chateau way of summoning servants; one of whom, answering, was directed to serve a hot bedtime drink useful for promoting slumber.
But it did not accomplish its purpose with Arcy. He lay awake until dawn endeavoring to discover the last link in the chain that was forging for his enemy. But nothing practicable suggested itself until the following morning when, sipping his chocolate in bed, his eyes remained riveted upon a blue envelope with a white address pasted thereon—the European form of telegram. Then, without the slightest effort, there was suggested that for which he had vainly racked his brain.
He leaped up, threw a dressing gown over his pajamas, thrust his feet into Japanese slippers and hurried down the chateau's cold halls to where Carolus Lang still lay abed. “I've got it!” Arcy almost shouted. Rapidly he outlined what the sight of the telegram envelope had suggested: “That is, if the present Mrs. Lazard dislikes her husband nearly as much as we do.”
“Set your mind at rest there,” returned Lang, his state of excitement one to cause the royal physicians grave concern. “She does.”
“Then it's as good as done,” said Arcy jubilantly. And Carolus Lang agreed that it was.

### XIII

Seven months later Milton Lazard awoke one morning in the Madison Avenue mansion of the late Carolus Lang and reached out his hand mechanically (as he had done so many mornings) for his little sack of near-alfalfa and brown cigarette papers. Despite the expertness of many years, half the tobacco spilled, the other half was blown upward into his eyes; for, as he leaned over to wet the paper with his tongue, a tremendous yawn split his face in two, tears came into his eyes, his body was shaken by a hundred heaves, his mouth twitched abominably and, altogether, he seemed in a paroxysm of pain. The cigarette paper dropped from his fingers; he fell back on his pillow.
Several times he essayed to raise himself and reach beneath the bolster; but it was not until the third time that he succeeded, drawing out a long, thin case encircled by a rubber band which held a spoon. This latter he hastily dipped into the water glass on the carved cabinet that served as a night table; on which was also a cunning device of a great silversmith, a tiny silver figurine representing a Crusader in full armor, naked blade in hand, lance couched at an imaginary Saracen. Lazard pulled at the lancehead, which fell off and dangled by a tiny silver chain, while a flame of ignited alcohol shot from the lance. Over this Lazard held his spoon until the water bubbled and boiled; upon which he filled with it a small syringe he had taken from the case. Into this, removing the piston rod while the water boiled, he dropped four little white pellets. The water drawn in, these dissolved. Screwing on a needle so tiny as to seem but a point of light, he carefully examined his forearm, and finding a place where neither veins nor arteries interfered, he injected into his listless blood the contents of the syringe; then lay back, with his eyes closed, his features relaxed, while the drug coursed madly through his system. A foolish smile came to his face: he stretched out his limbs in an ecstasy of enjoyment, laughing aloud as the pleasant things he might do that day occurred to him. Faster than the fastest moving picture cyclorama, he had visions of an 80–90 H. P. car shooting through the greenwood; the water of the Hudson cleaved before the swiftly moving prow of one of the fastest speed boats on the river; all the pretty girls of the Casino show looked admiringly toward the box where he sat with his new and wealthy wife.
He opened his eyes, enjoying the realization of the present now the necessity for the morphine—to which he had had recourse months before that he might maintain the wit necessary to win his new wife—had been satisfied. Now he rolled his brown paper cigarette with ease, as he lay there in a bed which had once been a king's: a masterpiece of Florentine bronze, covered with representations of pornographic mythology—Leda and the swan, Jupiter wooing Danaē, Venus and Adonis, Diana and her huntmaids in the brook, a rash boy peering through the reeds—many more such incidents on which a certain decadent monarch had desired to look and look again. This royal couch had been purchased for half a million francs. And a plebeian adventurer now lay upon it smoking cigarettes twenty of which did not cost a penny!
Presently he reached up and pressed one of a row of enameled buttons imbedded in an embossed globe that swung from the head of the bed. A servant appeared with coffee and fruit: another laid out Lazard's linen and clothes, summoning a third who determined to a nicety the temperature of the parasite's bath and, first sweating him, punched and pummelled his face and body into an appearance of health and strength. Emerging in a dressing gown La Pompadour or DuBarry might have envied, Lazard permitted a dapper and impeccably attired young gentleman—who had been waiting for the past hour—to kneel and take measurements, another dapper and impeccably attired young gentleman writing them down.
“You wish us to attend to choosing the cloth? Yes, sir. We will see no one has any of the same pattern as any of yours. Shall we say a dozen lounging suits, three morning coats, one black, with pin stripe black trousers, one gray, one fawn-colored, each with self-trousers; smoking suits (by which he meant dinner jacket), one double-breasted, one single; riding suit, knickerbocker suit—and I should advise Bedford cords, also, sir; they're very smart. (Bedford cords also, Mr. Mink.) Then a house suit braided, with scarlet facings'—the young man seemed to go into an ecstasy. “And now as for fancy waistcoats . . .”
But we need follow this young gentleman no further. When his business was concluded, the valet brought Mr. Lazard's mail in a huge basket; the tradesmen and the begging letter writers, the secretaries of charities and a majority of those to whom Lazard had ever addressed a single word, all had been busy. He shook his head. “Later,” he said; “and I can't see anybody else this morning, Wilkins, even if I did make appointments.”
“No, sir; certainly not. Very good; thank you, sir,” returned Wilkins mechanically. He had trained himself to be an automaton during working hours—although, for many years, he had ruffled it along Broadway of nights, knew Lazard's record and despised him.
“And I'm not to be disturbed by anybody, either,” continued Lazard, enjoying his new importance immensely. “I shall be in consultation with Mrs. Lazard and with my attorneys and her attorneys and the late Mr. Lang's attorneys. The will's to be read today. Although, of course, we know its contents, naturally. Mrs. Lang knew the day the old gentleman died. He must have gone loony if he imagined anybody with a dome not pure concrete would stand for such foolishness; and I'm going to tell his lawyers so, too.”
“And a lot they'll care what you tell 'em,” thought Wilkins; but aloud he replied sympathetically: “Quite so, sir. I should if I were you, sir. They want taking down a bit, those lawyer fellows: thieves I call 'em, sir.”
Lazard nodded his head lordlily. “As full of larceny as Sing Sing,” he agreed. “If you locked them up, you could turn everybody in the jails loose. They're just as harmless as a nest of baby adders. Guess they didn't reckon on having a man to deal with, or they wouldn't try to put over a raw one like this will. But they insist on a formal reading and explanation, so here goes another morning to hell and gone.” He sighed wearily: Wilkins was to imagine that every moment of his master's day was as precious as rubies.
Below in the great Lang library—hung in Imperial purple, the eagles stamped and emblazoned on draperies, upholstery and on the bindings of the handsome hand-tooled purple volumes, with Empire medallions and bronze carvings on table legs, mantels, chairs, chaises-longues, with the many Tanagra figurines enclosed in glass and Lang's curio cases of Napoleonic relics set into the tops of slim, straight-legged mahogany tables—sat every known species of legal sharp. There was snowy-haired Judge Cheyney (formerly of Fai'fax Co't House, suh) but for many years senior partner of Cheyney, Cholmondeley, Isaacs, McGinnis and Salvini—a firm which united all suffrages by having a representative of every prominent race that made up New York's diverse population. Sir Jameson Cholmondeley was of the recognized King's Counsel type: he looked half dressed without his snowy peruke and official robes: he had come posthaste from England—where he represented the British end of the firm—to be present at the will reading. Isaacs was a type of highly educated Jew: he had the face of an artist, save for eyes like a shrewd peddler. McGinnis was a good-natured Tammany type, Salvini, who also conducted a bank for Neapolitans and Sicilians, a florid Italian political type.
Then there were Lazard's lawyers, redolent of Broadway flash and brash: a young Jew who wore patent leather shoes with a lounge suit and a mathematically exact double rhomboid of a four-in-hand secured by a large solitaire, his companion the sort of American who hates foreign countries where a willingness to buy endless drinks does not admit one to the confidence of strangers or put an obligation on acquaintances to lend him money: who noisily applauds flag waving songs and insists the eagle is more than a match for any foreign foe, but who resents extra taxes for armaments and who never enlists in time of war. This person had already said something excruciatingly funny concerning the King's Counsel's habit of carrying his handkerchief in a cuff instead of in a hip pocket: having yet to learn that this latter medium did not exist in smartly cut garments.
Mrs. Lazard's lawyers sat with these latter ornaments to the bar: colorless persons not to be distinguished from thousands of others who wear secret order insignia in their lapels or as watch charms; a couple as characterless as a glass of water: “pillars of society.” They had been endeavoring, for some days, to convince themselves that it showed a proper respect for the deceased when their client remarried within a week; for they earnestly assured the public that they undertook no cases they did not believe beyond reproach. Having succeeded (as usual) in taming their boasted unruliness of conscience, they, like good Christian men, were now glaring at the ruffianly executors—certain staid gentlemen of vast scientific attainments who, with the former Fai'fax Co't House judge, were plotting some villainy to mulct their estimable worthy client, a woman whose character was beyond the reproach of any save rogues.
But skilled in self-deception though they were, the sight of Milton Lazard—in a suit of brown that verged upon wine color, and a flaming striped necktie, his absurdly small feet advertised by buttoned tan shoes with vivid cloth tops, his eyes greedy, his heavy brutal chin flattened over his high collar—gave them uneasy qualms; qualms that were increased by her own attire as she flaunted in on his arm. Her dress was black, to be sure, but so coquettishly cut, so scanty of skirt and tight of waist—“à la princesse”—that it resembled a stage costume more than a widow's grief, especially when allied to a coiffure of piled-up puffs, elaborately waved, and a face enameled so rigidly it seemed to creak when she spoke. If she had laughed, the whole pitiable mass might have crumbled away like wet plaster on an old ceiling. Small of figure and of features, she might have passed at a distance for a costly coryphee; near, she was a mere exhibit of upholstery and kalsomining, of small charms long deceased and denied decent burial.
But she bore herself with the air of a spoiled and petted beauty: too many youths had been dependent upon her for theaters, restaurants, motor rides, gold cigarette cases and silken haberdashery to deny her that admiration as necessary to her as air. To her lawyers and Lazard's she now endeavored to convey the impression of a helpless girl relying on manly chivalry. The Lang henchmen she aimed to impress as one injured, insulted and irate, yet in her gentle goodness willing to forgive and be friends.
Lazard thinned his lips at this, indicating immense reserve forces, warning one and all that here at least was a mighty fellow grimly determined that justice should be done, able to enforce it, too: reticent and repressed now, but let all who would attempt chicanery 'ware his wrath. Which caused her lawyers to assume an air of virtue, his of outraged American independence; but which went entirely unnoticed by the callous ruffian band, who seemed as contented as pussy cats purring in anticipation of a breakfast of rich cream—all of which endured for the reading of the early portions of the will.
These dealt with pictures and curios bequeathed to societies, clubs and museums; legacies and minor bequests to friends and servants. Once only did Lazard lose his pose: imagining he had heard mentioned as one of the former a certain Robert C. MacThyndall; and for the moment he suspected something sinister in the quiet, assured air of the executor who read. There was too much calm about his companions' countenances, too. But Judge Cheyney's soft Southern intonations had slurred over Arcy's name; and Lazard assured himself he had not heard aright. How might the great Carolus Lang come to such intimacy with an obscure reporter; and in so short a time? . . . Righteous wrath soon replaced the momentary fear when Judge Cheyney came to the section bequeathing “to my beloved wife, Louisa Marie Lang, the interest upon my entire estate for life,” a wrath that grew during what seemed an interminable recital of the aims and ambitions of the three colleges of “scientific research” etc. Several times his attorneys thought it part of their duty as legal advisers to lay restraining hands on his shoulders; delaying his fiery denunciation until Judge Cheyney wiped his tortoise shell spectacles, folded over the rustling pages of the heavily sealed document and smiled in a congratulatory manner upon the chief beneficiary; who, however, seemed as removed from gratitude as if the will had failed to mention her name.
Now she began to flutter in what, no doubt, she deemed an adorably helpless little way; her eyes beseeching her generalissimo and her two armies to defend her against a cruel and unexpected assault. It was the opportunity for which Lazard had been training all his life. He fired a preliminary gun in the shape of a portentous frown; and, as he rose, the enemy seemed to give him that grave attention due a foe worth considering.
“If Mrs. Lazard takes my advice,” he began—and then the batteries of the enemy ceased immediately to be masked.
“You refuh to Mrs. Lang, suh?” inquired the ancient judge, a schoolmaster to a schoolboy.
“Lazard,” thundered the owner of that name, glaring about him in a manner meant to be tremendously annihilating.
Judge Cheyney shrugged his shoulders: the schoolmaster deploring the caning that the schoolboy seemed bent on making inevitable, yet which so offended the master's dignity that he sought a deputy; nodding to that member of the firm more accustomed to bellicose methods. McGinnis rose, his smile calculated to provoke further warfare. “Who?” he asked.
Lazard repeated the information in a louder tone. “And I'll ask you to remember it, too,” he added, increasing the insult of his intonation.
“I was under the impression that Mrs. Lazard was in Reno,” returned McGinnis blandly. “Only this morning we received a message from her there. I have it here. It occurred to me you might like to see it.” The velvetiness of his Irish voice was never more in evidence, as he tossed it across the long, low Empire center table.
But Lazard let it lie where it had fallen. “I'm not interested in that person,” he rejoined stiffly: then lost all pretense at dignity as he added, choking: “You know well enough there is only one Mrs. Lazard as far as we are concerned. ”
“But you speak as though there were two,” said McGinnis in blank astonishment.
Something in his look and the amusement of the other enemies caused Lazard to sense again that sinister something the name of MacThyndall had evoked. But, perceiving no tangible reason therefor, he decided it was but part of the usual stock-in-trade of lawyers—first alarm, then attack; and he made an angry and pointless reply.
His and hers were on their feet now. “I must demand that my client be treated with civility at least,” said the hitherto passive owner of the patent leathers. “And I wish to remind you, gentlemen, that where you fail in respect to a lady, you may be within your legal rights, but you are not acting like gentlemen,” put in one of the commonplace men of the secret order insignia. “In plain words,” added the other, “our client considers this inimical to her best interests and will take an appeal—eh, Mrs. Lazard?” On this the six of them had agreed, the widow-bride having bowed to the majority when the worst interpretation of her late husband's intentions had confirmed Lazard's denunciations. And, as now he was favoring her with a terrific scowl, she made haste to nod.
“But why, my dear sir?” asked the King's Counsel, though consumed with curiosity and addressing McGinnis who, as spokesman, remained standing. “Why does everyone continue to address Mrs. Lang as Mrs. Lazard?”
McGinnis spread his palms. “I suppose I'll have to read the real Mrs. Lazard's telegram before they will believe it,” he said; and reached across the table where the yellow slip still lay. “Kindly give me your attention, everyone:
“Night Letter.
“Reno, Nevada, November 6th.
“Whoever sent a telegram “stating I am divorced from my husband Milton Soulsbee Lazard lied and forged my name. Cannot believe any such telegram was ever sent unless someone did it as a joke. My husband and I are on the best of terms. He sends me money regularly, as records of National bank here will show. Perhaps my being in Reno gave rise to this this rumor. Am here for my health, mountain air, doctor's orders. Will never divorce my dear husband.
“It is signed 'Minnie Lazard,'” added McGinnis, crossing and indicating the signature, while placing the telegram in the hands of Carolus Lang's widow. “'Minerva Mortimer' in parentheses. Stage name, I suppose. And now, Mrs. Lang, that you see how you have been victimized, it is up to you as to what you want us to do in this unpleasant matter. Shall we place the matter in the hands of the proper legal authorities? Or, to save you the unpleasant notoriety, the somewhat uncomfortable sensation of having the world know you have been the victim of a bigamist, we are willing to do what we can to assist you if you will assist us by signifying your acceptance of the will as executed, saving us the expense and trouble of any attempt to break it.”
He paused, taking a deep and satisfied breath, totally disregarding the Lazard lawyers and those of Mrs. Lang, who were loud in accusations of blackmail and conspiracy. As for Lazard, who had been for the moment in a condition of shock, he had now regained his assurance and was proclaiming wildly that the telegram was a subterfuge.
“Don't you think we've got you for that little dodge?” he shouted, shaking his fist in McGinnis's face. “A trick to make her accept a double-crossing will. It must be pretty fishy if you have to stoop to a trick like that. I've got the telegram from Minnie, haven't I?” he demanded of the now hysterical little woman. “I'll get it and show it to you again.”
“The point is, however,” interrupted McGinnis pleasantly, “that Mrs. Lazard did not send it. As she suggests, it may have been sent as a joke—but the joke is on Mrs. Lang, and we don't care for that sort of joke—I beg your pardon, sir.”
He addressed his apology to his senior, Sir Jameson Cholmondeley, K.C.B., who had risen, frowning.
“Gentlemen,” he protested, in tones of insulted probity. “Gentlemen—” His attitude coupled with his formidable dignity denoted danger; even Lazard was silenced when the K.C. turned a chilly look toward him. “I have heard a firm with which I have been associated for nearly half a century accused of an attempt to commit a criminal act,” continued Sir James. “Under the circumstances, I feel called upon to repeat my words of last night, and to demand instead of request that nothing be done which will render my colleagues accomplices in concealing a crime.” He turned to the youngest member of the firm. “Telephone for an officer, Mr. Salvini,” he directed. “Lay before the department the evidence of bigamy against this offensive person Lazard. Let his attorneys communicate with us in future by mail. We will have no more such disgraceful exhibitions. We do not care to hear any more from you, sir,” he added pointedly, addressing the flag waver, the drink purchaser, who had been most aggressive in his charges of fraud.
There was instant silence; then Salvini's voice could be heard asking that the Chief of Detectives despatch with all speed two plain clothes men. It was evident that he then listened while that official asked for particulars to fill out a warrant. “The name is Milton Lazard, occupation unknown, age thirty-odd, native of Nebraska; the charge is—”
But Lazard had reached him ere now, had placed a nervous shaking hand over the telephone receiver. “Don't—don't!” he entreated. “You've got me, I guess. I'll do whatever you say”—as in another age the misshapen jester, his ancestor, had crouched on the cobbles of the courtyard and kissed his master's feet that the threatening lash might not descend upon him.
Salvini, somewhat disconcerted, beckoned McGinnis, who took his place: the great McGinnis, a power in police eyes, a politician who could with a nod destroy even detective chiefs.
“It's all right, my boy—McGinnis talking . . . yes, Aloysius P. Hold the line a minute.” He covered both receiver and transmitter, and turned. “You've got just one minute to decide in, Mr. Lazard,” he said. “Leave this room and take your representatives with you, or leave it in custody. Hurry! I can't keep the chief waiting. He's apt to grow peevish—”
McGinnis grinned. Lazard turned to his lawyers: “It's a frame-up,” he said sullenly.
McGinnis uncovered the transmitter. “Chief—” he began.
“Wait, wait,” said Lazard, terror-stricken. “We're going—we're going. Come on, boys.” And, herding his attorneys, who tried to detain him, he made an inglorious exit.
“Now, Mrs. Lang?” McGinnis used a gentler tone, but did not alter his position at the telephone; though the commonplace men were protesting that such actions were high-handed outrages that all present should bitterly repent.
“It's simply a question of whether you wish to be our friends or not,” continued McGinnis calmly. “Yes, yes, Chief,” he interpolated; “I ask you to wait, please. . . . Mrs. Lang, you see how impatient he is. . . . If you are going to accept this will, please sign the acceptance—Isaacs, please.” His partner moved toward her, offering her his fountain pen, indicating the place of signature. “If you wish to cause us trouble and annoyance, take the advice of the bigamist who has deliberately deceived you.” McGinnis could not make his usual gesture, for his hands were engaged: his face, however, was expressive.
“What would you do?” she shrilled in falsetto, fluttering in earnest this time.
“He will be arrested and undoubtedly sentenced, and the world will know how you have been victimized,'” put in the King's Counsel, interposing bluffly.
“Tut, tut, Suh Jameson,” muttered Judge Cheyney. “An honored name? Nonsense, suh. Now if the will were unfair to you, dear lady . . . But you keep youah house here, youah Newport villa, youah chateau at Cannes. Whereas, if you broke the will and secured youah dower, youah income would not permit such extravagances. This man Lazard wished the will broken so that he could lay his hands on ready money . . .”
Again McGinnis quieted the unruly official at the other end of the wire—or seemed to do so. In face of both arguments, and despite the warnings of her counsel, she seized Isaacs's pen. “There,” she said petulantly. And signed.
She could never be persuaded thereafter that Lazard was not in some way responsible for her future misfortunes. One by one, as the years passed and Lang's instructions were obeyed, she saw her houses go: first the Newport villa, then the Madison Avenue mansion, until she had only the Cannes chateau where, like her husband, she went to die. However, she lived longer than if she had had the entire income to lavish upon other young men, or her dower right to squander upon Lucullian luxury. By reducing her to fifty thousand a year the executors added an extra decade, which gave the good priests of Cannes the opportunity to frighten her into fear of a future state; causing the fatuous old sinner to imagine that at so advanced an hour she might cheat the devil of his due; and, once convinced that further dissipation would speedily end her days, she put in a belated bid for the least purchasable of all things—with the encouragement of the holy fathers. Sir Jameson Cholmondeley, believing in the efficacy of such repentances, overruled the savant executors, and at any rate the Rest House of St. Mary Sulpicia profited: a certain number of penniless people may always find bed and board there, thanks to her donation. Even she could not die without the world having benefited somewhat.

### XIV

Lazard left the house before an investigation of his luggage could be made. It was not until he again examined that luggage minutely, in the comparative safety of a steamer headed for a Latin-American city where he would be non-extraditable, that he discovered that in his valet, Wilkins, he had had the services of a brother craftsman; who, perverting the golden rule in his case as Lazard had done in the case of Lang, had removed many of the more important exhibits in the collection of stickpins, cuff links, jeweled waistcoat buttons and other bijouterie that Mrs. Lang had given the object of her admiration. So that all Lazard had to show for his residence in the Lang house was now worth but a few thousands. Thus, a few weeks later, a pitiful letter reached the Lang executors through Lazard's lawyers, and its contemptuous answer allowed him to return to a country where his gift of language might again earn him a livelihood. A bitter experience at the hands of the customs officials awaited him. Not having been abroad before, he had shown the remainder of the Lang jewelry to a female passenger he was endeavoring to impress, and, some of the cabin stewards being, as usual, customs spies, Lazard was disagreeably surprised on landing by a request for its history. Not daring to give a real one, he must sell some gems to pay the duty: was thus mulcted of a large portion of all he had saved from the wreck of his high hopes.
A little later, as the news of his return spread along Broadway, Lily Lamotte's husband called upon him, administered a severe thrashing and a warning that, if he heard of any further reminiscences involving Lily's name, he would call again with a revolver. This man had known Lily when she was Lazard's appanage, had been deceived by her for him; but, despite this, had hurried to her at the first announcement of the second marriage of Mrs. Lang; having been as unable to conquer his passion as the average drunkard. Being a moody and morose person, with a superb chest development and a hard hitting record, he was quite able to gain for his wife the respect in which a man wishes his wife to be held. So that Lily Lamotte, nowadays, moves in one of the best bourgeois circles, and seems one of the most typical of her many female acquaintances therein. Lazard always looks the other way if by any chance they meet in public places.
He was even more of a hero to the new court he gathered about him than to the old; for, the true facts of the Lang catastrophe never even reaching the servants, he was free to interpret his ejection in his own way, and was pointed out as the man who, having won a fortune, deliberately abandoned it because his nature turned in disgust against rendering affection to a dyed and painted old woman. “I thought I could do it, but it would have been easier to make the Statue of Liberty do a turkey trot,” he has said many thousand times. Which tale of temperament, added to the “fame” with which his supposed marriage had covered him, won him the affections of another Lily. On Broadway when nasty notorieties pack the theaters and capable histrions in craftsmanlike plays can draw only average audiences, it does not matter how one becomes “famous” so long as it is accomplished.
Curiously enough, Lily the Second is evening the score for Lily the First and for all the others. Lazard, after winning her by indifference, has become violently infatuated, thus cooling her ardor; and is now retained only because he works harder in her service than would a press agent on a salary; so that for her vaudeville engagements the remuneration has been raised. Now, indeed, is there truth in his former statement that he receives only “half an orange in the morning and a sack of tobacco a week”; and some day, when her heart is touched anew, he will find himself in the position in which he has placed so many other men. Then abandonment, and, as his formula for wit has become general along the Nightless Lane, and his girth and chins have increased during the years he has served the second Lily, she will have no successor; unless he should happen to find a fortune on the Broadway sidewalk—which, to say the least, is unlikely—and is willing to augment with it his failing fascinations. His future prospects are not such as to encourage any to follow in his path.
Not the least of his annoyances is the frequency with which the names of Toya Thiodolf and Robert Cameron MacThyndall figure in theatrical announcements, publishers' lists and other forms of enviable publicity.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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