ng in with
Clayte--Oh, boy!"

He threw back his head and roared.

CHAPTER III

A WEDDING PARTY

I looked at my watch; quarter of ten; a little ahead of my appointment.
I ordered a telephone extension brought to this corner table I had
reserved at Tait's and got in touch with my office; then with the
knowledge that any new kink in the case would be reported immediately to
me, I relaxed to watch the early supper crowd arrive: Women in picture
hats and bare or half-bare shoulders with rich wraps slipping off them;
hum of voices; the clatter of silver and china; waiters beginning to
wake up and dart about settling new arrivals. And I wondered idly what
sort of party would come to sit around one long table across from me
specially decorated with pale tinted flowers.

There was a sense of warmth and comfort at my heart. I am a lonely man;
the people I take to seem to have a way of passing on in the stream of
life--or death--leaving me with a few well-thumbed volumes on a shelf in
my rooms for consolation. Walt Whitman, Montaigne, The Bard, two or
three other lesser poets, and you've the friends that have stayed by me
for thirty years. And so, having met up with Worth Gilbert when he was a
youngster, at the time his mother was living in San Francisco to get a
residence for her divorce proceedings, having loved the boy and got I am
sure some measure of affection in return, it seemed almost too much to
ask of fate that he should come back into my days, plunge into such a
proposition as this bank robbery, right at my elbow as it were, and
make himself my employer--my boss.

I was a subordinate in the agency in those old times when he and I used
to chin about the business, and his idea (I always discussed it gravely
and respectfully with him) was to grow up and go into partnership with
me. Well, we were partners now.

Past ten, nearly five minutes. Where was he? What up to? Would he miss
his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid
of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter
Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table
with cigars and cigarettes. Then he was coming down the room.

A man who takes his own path in life, and will walk it though hell bar
the way, never explaining, never extenuating, never excusing his
course--something seems to emanate from such a chap that draws all eyes
after him in a public place in a look between fear and