The Day of Days

The Day of Days

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Title: The Day of Days An Extravaganza
Author: Louis Joseph Vance
Illustrator: Arthur William Brown
Release Date: May 20, 2005 [EBook #15873]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE DAY OF DAYS
BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
THE DAY OF DAYS THE DESTROYING ANGEL THE BANDBOX
CYNTHIA-OF-THE-MINUTE NO MAN'S LAND THE FORTUNE
HUNTER THE POOL OF FLAME THE BRONZE BELL THE
BLACK BAG THE BRASS BOWL THE PRIVATE WAR TERENCE
O'ROURKE
[Illustration: "What I want to say is--will you be my guest at the theatre

tonight?" FRONTISPIECE.]

THE DAY OF DAYS
AN EXTRAVAGANZA
BY
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
AUTHOR OF "THE BRASS BOWL," "THE BLACK BAG," "THE
BANDBOX," "THE DESTROYING ANGEL," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1913
_Copyright, 1912, 1913_, BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE.
_All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian._
Published, February, 1913 Reprinted, March, 1913
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. THE DUB II. INSPIRATION III. THE GLOVE COUNTER IV. A
LIKELY STORY V. THE COMIC SPIRIT VI. SPRING TWILIGHT
VII. AFTERMATH VIII. WHEELS OF CHANCE IX. THE
PLUNGER X. UNDER FIRE XI. BURGLARY UNDER ARMS XII.
THE LADY OF THE HOUSE XIII. RESPECTABILITY XIV.
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD XV. SUCH STUFF AS PLOTS

ARE MADE OF XVI. BEELZEBUB XVII. IN A BALCONY XVIII.
THE BROOCH XIX. NEMESIS XX. NOVEMBER XXI. THE
SORTIE XXII. TOGETHER XXIII. PERCEVAL UNASHAMED

ILLUSTRATIONS
"What I want to say is--will you be my guest at the theatre tonight?"
"You are the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look
before she shoots!"
Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.
He was Red November.

THE DAY OF DAYS
I
THE DUB
"Smell," P. Sybarite mused aloud....
For an instant he was silent in depression. Then with extraordinary
vehemence he continued crescendo: "Stupid-stagnant-sepulchral-
sempiternally-sticky-Smell!"
He paused for both breath and words--pondered with bended head,
knitting his brows forbiddingly.
"Supremely squalid, sinisterly sebaceous, sombrely sociable Smell!" he
pursued violently.
Momentarily his countenance cleared; but his smile was as fugitive as
the favour of princes.
Vindictively champing the end of a cedar penholder, he groped for
expression: "Stygian ... sickening ... surfeiting ... slovenly ... sour...."
He shook his head impatiently and clawed the impregnated atmosphere
with a tragic hand.
"_Stench!_" he perorated in a voice tremulous with emotion.
Even that comprehensive monosyllable was far from satisfactory.
"Oh, what's the use?" P. Sybarite despaired.
Alliteration could no more; his mother-tongue itself seemed
poverty-stricken, his native wit inadequate. With decent meekness he
owned himself unfit for the task to which he had set himself.
"I'm only a dub," he groaned--"a poor, God-forsaken, prematurely aged

and indigent dub!"
For ten interminable years the aspiration to do justice to the Genius of
the Place had smouldered in his humble bosom; to-day for the first time
he had attempted to formulate a meet apostrophe to that God of his
Forlorn Destiny; and now he chewed the bitter cud of realisation that
all his eloquence had proved hopelessly poor and lame and halting.
Perched on the polished seat of a very tall stool, his slender legs
fraternising with its legs in apparently inextricable intimacy; sharp
elbows digging into the nicked and ink-stained bed of a counting-house
desk; chin some six inches above the pages of a huge leather-covered
ledger, hair rumpled and fretful, mouth doleful, eyes disconsolate--he
gloomed...
On this the eve of his thirty-second birthday and likewise the tenth
anniversary of his servitude, the appearance of P. Sybarite was
elaborately normal--varying, as it did, but slightly from one year's-end
to the other.
His occupation had fitted his head and shoulders with a deceptive but
none the less perennial stoop. His means had endowed him with a
single outworn suit of ready-made clothing which, shrinking sensitively
on each successive application of the tailor's sizzling goose, had come
to disclose his person with disconcerting candour--sleeves too short,
trousers at once too short and too narrow, waistcoat buttons straining
over his chest, coat buttons refusing to recognise a buttonhole save that
at the waist. Circumstances these that added measurably to his apparent
age, lending him the semblance of maturity attained while still in the
shell of youth.
The ruddy brown hair thatching his well-modelled head, his sanguine
colouring, friendly