The Gates of Chance | Page 5

there--who knows. Besides, it's directly on my way to the Globe, and the curtain is not until eight-thirty. Tell you what, old man; come along with me and see the thing to a finish. Fate leads a card--Mr. Esper Indiman's--and we'll play the second hand; what do you say?"
I declined firmly. God forbid that I should be featured, along with the other exhibits in the case, on the first page of to-morrow's Planet.
"So," he assented, indifferently, and pushed his chair back. "Well, I must push along--Lord! there's that copy--the old man will have it in for me good and plenty if I don't get it down in time. Adios!" He disappeared, and I let him depart willingly enough. Later on I went up to the library for a smoke--no fear of encountering any Jeckleys there, and, in fact, the room was entirely deserted. I looked at my watch; it was ten minutes after seven, and that gave me a quarter of an hour in which to think it over. Should I accept Mr. Indiman's invitation to call?
I looked around for an ash-tray, and, seeing one on the big writing-table in the centre of the room, I walked over to it.
There were some bits of white lying in the otherwise empty tray-- the fragments of a torn-up visiting-card. A portion of the engraved script caught my eye, "Indi--"
It was not difficult to piece together the bits of pasteboard, for I knew pretty well what I should find. Completed, the puzzle read, "Mr. Esper Indiman," and in pencil, "Call at 4020 Madison Avenue at half-past seven this evening."
So there were three of us--if not more. Rather absurd this assignment of a separate quarter of an hour to each interview-- quite as though Mr. Indiman desired to engage a valet and we were candidates for the position. Evidently, an eccentric person, but it's a queer world anyhow, as most of us know. There's my own case, for example. I'm supposed to be a gentleman of leisure and means. Leisure, certainly, but the means are slender enough, and proceeding in a diminishing ratio. That's the penalty of having been born a rich man's son and educated chiefly in the arts of riding off at polo and thrashing a single-sticker to windward in a Cape Cod squall. But I sha'n't say a word against the governor, God bless him! He gave me what I thought I wanted, and it wasn't his fault that an insignificant blood-clot should beat him out on that day of days--the corner in "R. P." It was never the Chicago crowd that could have downed him--I'm glad to remember that.
Well, there being only the two of us, it didn't matter so much; it wasn't as though there were a lot of helpless womenfolk to consider. After the funeral and the settlement with the creditors there was left--I'm ashamed to say how little, and, anyway, it's no one's business; the debts were paid. What is a man to do, at thirty-odd, who has never turned his hand to anything of use? The governor's friends? Well, they didn't know how bad things were, and I couldn't go to them with the truth and make them a present of my helpless, incompetent self.
And so for the last two years I've been sticking it out in a hall bedroom, just west of the dead-line. I have a life membership in the club--what a Christmas present that has turned out to be!--and twice in the week I dine there. As for the rest of it, never mind-- there are things which a man can do but of which he doesn't care to speak.
The future? Ah, you can answer that question quite as well as I. Now I had calculated that, at my present rate of expenditure, I could hold out until Easter, but there have been contingencies. To illustrate, I had my pocket picked yesterday morning. Amusing-- isn't it?--that it should have been my pocket--my pocket!
Fortunately I have stacks of clothes and some good pearl shirt- studs, and I continue to present a respectable appearance. I shall always do that, I think. I don't like the idea of the pawn-shop and the dropping down one degree at a time. If, in the end, it shall be shown clearly that the line is to be crossed, I shall walk over it quietly and as a man should; I object to the indecency of being dragged or carried across. What line do I mean? I don't know that I could tell you clearly. What is in your own mind? There IS a line.
At half after seven I left the club, and exactly a quarter of an hour later I stood opposite the doorway of No. 4020 Madison Avenue. A tall man was descending the steps; I recognized Bingham,