d from
university--usual story. A mind like a steel trap. Makes his living any
old way. I know he's been a street fakir when he was down. Unscrupulous.
Rob a corpse of a shroud--anything. Difference between him--and the
bourgeoisie is that he robs without illusion. He'll talk Nietzsche, or
Schopenhauer, or Kant, or anything, but the only thing in this world, not
excepting Mary, that he really cares for, is his monism. Haeckel is his
little tin god. The only way to insult him is to take a slap at
Haeckel."

"Here's the hang-out." Brissenden rested his demijohn at the upstairs
entrance, preliminary to the climb. It was the usual two-story corner
building, with a saloon and grocery underneath. "The gang lives here--got
the whole upstairs to themselves. But Kreis is the only one who has two
rooms. Come on."

No lights burned in the upper hall, but Brissenden threaded the utter
blackness like a familiar ghost. He stopped to speak to Martin.

"There's one fellow--Stevens--a theosophist. Makes a pretty tangle when
he gets going. Just now he's dish-washer in a restaurant. Likes a good
cigar. I've seen him eat in a ten-cent hash-house and pay fifty cents
for the cigar he smoked afterward. I've got a couple in my pocket for
him, if he shows up."

"And there's another fellow--Parry--an Australian, a statistician and a
sporting encyclopaedia. Ask him the grain output of Paraguay for 1903,
or the English importation of sheetings into China for 1890, or at what
weight Jimmy Britt fought Battling Nelson, or who was welter-weight
champion of the United States in '68, and you'll get the correct answer
with the automatic celerity of a slot-machine. And there's Andy, a stone-
mason, has ideas on everything, a good chess-player; and another fellow,
Harry, a baker, red hot socialist and strong union man. By the way, you
remember Cooks' and Waiters' strike--Hamilton was the chap who organized
that union and precipitated the strike--planned it all out in advance,
right here in Kreis's rooms. Did it just for the fun of it, but was too
lazy to stay by the union. Yet he could have risen high if he wanted to.
There's no end to the possibilities in that man--if he weren't so
insuperably lazy."

Brissenden advanced through the darkness till a thread of light marked
the threshold of a door. A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin
found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with
dazzling white t