The Gates of Chance | Page 7

It should have been the finishing touch, and it was, but not after the fashion that might have been expected. As though by magic, the horrible tension relaxed; my nerves again took command of the situation; I felt as cool and collected as at any previous moment in my life.
In the centre of the room stood a heavy table of some East-Indian wood--teak, I think, they call it. I could have sworn that there was nothing whatever upon this table when I entered the room; now I saw three objects lying there. I walked up and examined them. As they lay towards me, the first was a ten- thousand-dollar bill, the second a loaded revolver, caliber .44, the third an envelope of heavy white paper directed to me, Winston Thorp. The letter was brief and formal; it read:
"Mr. Indiman presents his compliments to Mr. Thorp and requests the honor of his company at dinner, Tuesday, March the thirtieth, at nine o'clock.
"4020 Madison Avenue."
Dishonor, death, and dinner--a curious trio to choose between. Yet to a man in my present position each of them appealed in its own way, and I'm not ashamed to confess it. Perhaps the choice I made may seem inevitable, but what if you had seen Bingham's face as I did, with the arc light full upon it? It was the remembrance of that which made me hesitate; twice I drew my hand away and looked at the money and the pistol.
Through the open door came a ravishing odor, that of a filet a la Chateaubriand; the purely animal instincts reasserted themselves, and I picked up the gardenia blossom that lay beside the letter and stuck it into the button-hole of my dinner-jacket. I looked down at the table, and it seemed to me that the ten-thousand-dollar note and the pistol had disappeared. But what of that, what did anything matter now; I was going to dine--to dine!
I walked up-stairs, guided by that delicious, that heavenly odor, and entered the dining-room in the rear, without the smallest hesitation. At one end of the table sat a man of perhaps forty years of age. An agreeable face, for all of the tired droop about the mouth and the deep lines in the forehead; it could light up, too, upon occasion, as I was soon to discover. For the present I did not bother myself with profitless conjectures; that entrancing filet, displayed in a massive silver cover, stood before him; I could not take my eyes from it.
My host, for such he evidently was, rose and bowed with great politeness.
"You must pardon me," he said, "for sitting down; but, as my note said, I dine at nine. I will have the shell-fish and soup brought on."
"I should prefer to begin with the filet," I said, decidedly.
A servant brought me a plate; my hand trembled, but I succeeded in helping myself without spilling the precious sauce; I ate.
"There are three conditions of men who might be expected to accept the kind of invitation which has brought me the honor of your company," remarked my host as we lit our cigarettes over the Roman punch. "To particularize, there is the curious impertinent, the merely foolish person, and the man in extremis rerum. Now I have no liking for the dog-faced breed, as Homer would put it, and neither do I suffer fools gladly. At least, one of the latter is not likely to bother me again." He smiled grimly, and I thought of Bingham's face of terror.
"I found my desperate man in you, my dear Mr. Thorp, shall we drink to our better acquaintance?" I bowed, and we drank.
"The precise nature of your misfortune does not concern me," he continued, airily. "It is sufficient that we are of the same mind in our attitude towards the world--'to shake with Destiny for beers,' is it not?
"One may meet with many things on the highway of life--poverty, disease, sorrow, treacheries. These are disagreeable, I admit, but they are positive; one may overcome or, at least, forget them. But suppose you stand confronting the negative of existence; the highway is clear, indeed, but how interminable its vista, its straight, smooth, and intolerably level stretch. That road is mine.
"Yes; I have tried the by-paths. Once I was shanghaied; twice I have been marooned and by my own men. That last amused me--a little. I was the second man to arrive at Bordeaux in the Paris- Madrid race of 1903; during the Spanish-American war I acted as a spy for the United States government in Barcelona.
"I made the common mistake of confounding the unusual with the interesting. Romance is a shy bird, and not to be hunted with a brass band. Where is the heart of life, if not at one's elbow? At the farthest, one has