A Splendid Hazard | Page 9

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To-day the Italian vender of plaster statuettes caught his eye. For an hour now the poor wretch hadn't even drawn the attention of one of the thousands passing. Fitzgerald felt sorry for him, and once the desire came to go over and buy out the Neapolitan; but he was too comfortable where he was, and beyond that he was expecting a friend.
Fitzgerald was thirty, with a clean-shaven, lean, and eager face, russet in tone, well offset by the fine blue eyes which had the faculty of seeing little and big things at the same time. He had dissipated in a trifling fashion, but the healthy, active life he lived in the open more than counteracted the effects. A lonely orphan, possessing a lively imagination, is seldom free from some vice or other. There had never been, however, what the world is pleased to term entanglements. His guardian angel gave him a light step whenever there was any social thin ice. Oh, he had some relatives; but as they were neither very rich nor very poor, they seldom annoyed one another. He was, then, a free lance in all the abused word implies; and he lived as he pleased, spending his earnings freely and often carelessly, knowing that the little his father had left him would keep a moderately hungry wolf from the door. He had been born to a golden spoon, but the food from the pewter one he now used tasted just as good.
"So here you are! I've been in the billiard-room, and the card-room, and the bar-room."
"Talking of bar-rooms!" Fitzgerald reached for the button. "Sit down, Hewitt, old boy. Glad to see you. Now, I'll tell you right off the bat, nothing will persuade me. For years I've been jumping to the four points of the compass at the beck of your old magazine and syndicate. I'm going to settle down and write a novel."
"Piffle!" growled the editor, dropping his lanky form into a chair. "Thank goodness, they haven't swivel chairs in the club. I've been whirling round in one all day--a long, tall Scotch, please--but a novel! I say, piffle!"
"Piffle it may be, but I'm going to have a whack at it. If I ever do another article it will be as a millionaire's private secretary. I should like to study his methods for saving his money. What is it this time?"
"A dash to the North Pole."
"Never again north of Berlin or south of Assuan for mine. No."
"Come, Fitz; a great chance."
"When you sent me to Manila I explored hell for you, but I've cooled off considerably since then. No ice for mine, except in silver buckets."
"You've made a pretty good thing out of us; something like five thousand a year and your expenses; and with the credentials we've always given you, you have been able to see the world as few men see it."
"That's just the trouble. You've spoiled me."
"Well, you may take my word for it, you won't have the patience to sit down at home here and write a hundred thousand words that mean anything. There's no reason why you can't do my work and write novels on the side. We both know a dozen fellows who are doing it. We've got to have this article, and you're the only man we dare trust alone on it, if it will flatter you any to know it."
"Come, pussy, come!"
"If it's a question of more money--"
"Perish the thought!" cried Fitzgerald, clasping his knees and rocking gently. "You know as well as I do, Hewitt, that it's the game and not the cash. I've found a new love, my boy."
"Double harness?" with real anxiety. Hewitt bit his scrubby mustache. When a special correspondent married that was the end of him.
"There you go again!" warned the recalcitrant. "If you don't stop eating that mustache you'll have stomach trouble that no Scotch whisky will ever cure. The whole thing is in a nutshell," a sly humor creeping into his eyes. "I am tired of writing ephemeral things. I want to write something that will last."
"Write your epitaph, Jack," drawled a deep voice from the reading table. "That's the only sure way, and even that is no good if your marble is spongy."
"Oh, Cathewe, this is not your funeral," retorted the editor.
"Perhaps not. All the same, I'll be chief mourner if Jack takes up novel writing. Critics don't like novels, because any one can write an average story; but it takes a genius to turn out first-class magazine copy. Anyhow, art becomes less and less particular every day. The only thing that never gains or loses is this London Times. Someday I'm going to match the Congressional Record and the Times for the heavyweight championship of the world, with seven to one on the Record, to weigh in at the