The Carpet From Bagdad | Page 8

the more vital matter of finances. He was close to the
nadir: four sovereigns, a florin, and a collection of battered coppers that
would have tickled the pulse of an amateur numismatist.
"No vintage to-night, my boy; no long, fat Havana, either. A bottle of
stout and a few rags of plug-cut; that's the pace we'll travel this evening.
The United Romance and Adventure Company is not listed at present.
If it was, I'd sell a few shares on my own hook. The kind Lord knows
that I've stock enough and to spare." He laughed again, but without the
leaven of humor. "When the fool-killer snatches up the last fool, let
rogues look to themselves; and fools are getting scarcer every day.
"Percival Algernon! O age of poets! I wonder, does he wear high
collars and spats, or has she plumbed him accurately? She is generally
right. But a man changes some in seven years. I'm an authority when it
comes to that. Look what's happened to me in seven years! First,
Horace, we shall dine, then we'll smoke our pipe in the billiard-room,
then we'll softly approach Percival Algernon and introduce him to
Sinbad. This independent excursion to Bagdad was a stroke on my part;
it will work into the general plan as smoothly as if it had been grooved
for the part. Sinbad. I might just as well have assumed that name:
Horace Sinbad, sounds well and looks well." He mused in silence, his
hand gently rubbing his chin; for he did possess the trick of talking

aloud, in a low monotone, a habit acquired during periods of loneliness,
when the sound of his own voice had succeeded in steadying his
tottering mind.
What a woman, what a wife, she would have been to the right man!
Odd thing, a man can do almost anything but direct his affections; they
must be drawn. She was not for him; nay, not even on a desert isle.
Doubtless he was a fool. In time she would have made him a rich man.
Alack! It was always the one we pursued that we loved and never the
one that pursued us.
"I'm afraid of her; and there you are. There isn't a man living who has
gone back of that Mona Lisa smile of hers. If she was the last woman
and I was the last man, I don't say." He hunted for a cigarette, but failed
to find one. "Almost at the bottom, boy; the winter of our discontent,
and no sun of York to make it glorious. Twenty-four hundred at cards,
and to lose it like a tyro! Wallace has taught me all he knows, but I'm a
booby. Twenty-four hundred, firm's money. It's a failing of mine, the
firm's money. But, damn it all, I can't cheat a man at cards; I'd rather
cut his throat."
He found his pipe, and a careful search of the corners of his
coat-pockets revealed a meager pipeful of tobacco. He picked out the
little balls of wool, the ground-coffee, the cloves, and pushed the
charge home into the crusted bowl of his briar.
"To the devil with economy! A pint of burgundy and a perfecto if they
hale us to jail for it. I'm dead tired. I've seen three corners in hell in the
past two months. I'm going as far as four sovereigns will take me....
Fortune Chedsoye." His blue eyes became less hard and his mouth less
defiant. "I repeat, the heart should be nothing but a pump. Otherwise it
gets in the way, becomes an obstruction, a bottomless pit. Will-power,
that's the ticket. I can face a lion without an extra beat, I can face the
various countenances of death without an additional flutter; and yet,
here's a girl who, when I see her or think of her, sends the pulse soaring
from seventy-seven up to eighty-four. Bad business; besides, it's so
infernally unfashionable. It's hard work for a man to keep his balance
'twixt the devil and the deep, blue sea; Gioconda on one side and

Fortune on the other. Gioconda throws open windows and doors at my
approach; but Fortune locks and bars hers, nor knocks at mine. That's
the way it always goes.
"If a man could only go back ten years and take a new start. Ass!"
balling his fist at the reflection in the mirror. "Snivel and whine over
the bed of your own making. You had your opportunity, but you
listened to the popping of champagne-corks, the mutter of cards, the
inane drivel of chorus-ladies. You had a decent college record, too. Bah!
What a guileless fool you were! You ran on, didn't you, till you found
your neck in the loop at the end of the rope? And perhaps that
soft-footed, estimable brother