The House of a Thousand Candles | Page 8

he had other sons; he granted Larry an allowance and told
him to keep away from home until he got ready to be respectable. So,
from Constantinople, after a tour of Europe, we together crossed the
Mediterranean in search of the flesh-pots of lost kingdoms, spending
three years in the pursuit. We parted at Cairo on excellent terms. He
returned to England and later to his beloved Ireland, for he had blithely
sung the wildest Gaelic songs in the darkest days of our adventures,
and never lost his love for The Sod, as he apostrophized--and
capitalized--his adopted country.
Larry had the habit of immaculateness. He emerged from his East-side
lodging-house that night clothed properly, and wearing the gentlemanly
air of peace and reserve that is so wholly incompatible with his
disposition to breed discord and indulge in riot. When we sat down for
a leisurely dinner at Sherry's we were not, I modestly maintain, a
forbidding pair. We--if I may drag myself into the matter--are both a
trifle under the average height, sinewy, nervous, and, just then, trained
fine. Our lean, clean-shaven faces were well-browned --mine wearing a
fresh coat from my days on the steamer's deck.
Larry had never been in America before, and the scene had for both of
us the charm of a gay and novel spectacle. I have always maintained, in
talking to Larry of nations and races, that the Americans are the
handsomest and best put-up people in the world, and I believe he was
persuaded of it that night as we gazed with eyes long unaccustomed to
splendor upon the great company assembled in the restaurant. The
lights, the music, the variety and richness of the costumes of the
women, the many unmistakably foreign faces, wrought a welcome spell

on senses inured to hardship in the waste and dreary places of earth.
"Now tell me the story," I said. "Have you done murder? Is the offense
treasonable?"
"It was a tenants' row in Galway, and I smashed a constable. I smashed
him pretty hard, I dare say, from the row they kicked up in the
newspapers. I lay low for a couple of weeks, caught a boat to
Queenstown, and here I am, waiting for a chance to get back to The
Sod without going in irons."
"You were certainly born to be hanged, Larry. You'd better stay in
America. There's more room here than anywhere else, and it's not easy
to kidnap a man in America and carry him off."
"Possibly not; and yet the situation isn't wholly tranquil," he said,
transfixing a bit of pompano with his fork. "Kindly note the florid
gentleman at your right --at the table with four--he's next the lady in
pink. It may interest you to know that he's the British consul."
"Interesting, but not important. You don't for a moment suppose--"
"That he's looking for me? Not at all. But he undoubtedly has my name
on his tablets. The detective that's here following me around is pretty
dull. He lost me this morning while I was talking to you in the bank.
Later on I had the pleasure of trailing him for an hour or so until he
finally brought up at the British consul's office. Thanks; no more of the
fish. Let us banish care. I wasn't born to be hanged; and as I'm a
political offender, I doubt whether I can be deported if they lay hands
on me."
He watched the bubbles in his glass dreamily, holding it up in his slim
well-kept fingers.
"Tell me something of your own immediate present and future," he
said.
I made the story of my Grandfather Glenarm's legacy as brief as

possible, for brevity was a definite law of our intercourse.
"A year, you say, with nothing to do but fold your hands and wait. It
doesn't sound awfully attractive to me. I'd rather do without the
money."
"But I intend to do some work. I owe it to my grandfather's memory to
make good, if there's any good in me."
"The sentiment is worthy of you, Glenarm," he said mockingly. "What
do you see--a ghost?"
I must have started slightly at espying suddenly Arthur Pickering not
twenty feet away. A party of half a dozen or more had risen, and
Pickering and a girl were detached from the others for a moment.
She was young--quite the youngest in the group about Pickering's table.
A certain girlishness of height and outline may have been emphasized
by her juxtaposition to Pickering's heavy figure. She was in black, with
white showing at neck and wrists--a somber contrast to the other
women of the party, who were arrayed with a degree of splendor. She
had dropped her fan, and Pickering stooped to pick it up. In the second
that she waited