evident that Tom
had noticed it and was jealous.

"I suppose he's rather a swell, isn't he?" I suggested tentatively.

A faint smile passed over Tom's face. It was partly cynical and partly
suggestive of that amused toleration of our youthful credulity which
seemed to be a part of that discomposing patronage that everybody
extended to the Club. As he said nothing, I continued encouragingly:--

"Because a man's a waiter, it doesn't follow that he's always been one,
or always will be."

"No," said Tom, abstractedly; "but it's about as good as anything else
to lie low and wait on." But here two customers entered, and he
turned to them, leaving me in doubt whether to accept this as a verbal
pleasantry or an admission. Only one thing seemed plain: I had certainly
gained no information, and only added a darker mystery to his conference
with Manners, which I determined I should ask Manners to explain.

I finished my meal in solitude. The rain was still beating drearily
against the windows with an occasional accession of impulse that seemed
like human impatience. Vague figures under dripping umbrellas, that
hid their faces as if in premeditated disguise, hurried from the main
thoroughfare. A woman in a hooded waterproof like a domino, a Mexican
in a black serape, might have been stage conspirators hastening to a
rendezvous. The cavernous chill and odor which I had before noted as
coming from some sarcophagus of larder or oven, where "funeral baked
meats" might have been kept in stock, began to oppress me. The hollow
and fictitious domesticity of this common board had never before seemed
so hopelessly displayed. And Tom, the waiter, his napkin twisted in
his hand and his face turned with a sudden dark abstraction towards the
window, appeared to be really "lying low," and waiting for something
outside his avocation.

CHAPTER II.

The fact that Tom did not happen to be on duty at the next Club dinner
gave me an opportunity to repeat his mysterious remark to Manners, and
to jokingly warn that rising young lawyer against the indiscretion of
vague counsel. Manners, however, only shrugged his shoulders. "I don't
know what he meant," he said carelessly; "but since he chooses to talk
of his own affairs publicly, I don't mind saying that they are neither
very weighty nor very dangerous. It's only the old story: the usual
matrimonial infidelities that are mixed up with the Californian
emigration. He leaves the regular wife be