"I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven."

"I must be off, too," said Shelton. Making their adieux together, they
sought their hats and coats.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT CLUB

"May I ask," said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the chilly
street, "What it is you call the 'Den'?"

His companion smilingly answered:

"Oh, the night club. We take it in turns. Thursday is my night. Would
you like to come? You see a lot of types. It's only round the corner."

Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:

"Yes, immensely."

They reached the corner house in an angle of a, dismal street, through
the open door of which two men had just gone in. Following, they
ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large boarded
room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes. It was
furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables, some wooden
forms, and a wooden bookcase. Seated on these wooden chairs, or standing
up, were youths, and older men of the working class, who seemed to
Shelton to be peculiarly dejected. One was reading, one against the wall
was drinking coffee with a disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and
a group of four made a ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.

A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-set,
black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with an
anaemic smile.

"You 're rather late," he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: "Do you play chess?
There 's young Smith wants a game."

A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown
chess-board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white. Shelton
took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.

The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
attitude, and watched:

"Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd be
able to give Banks a knight." His eyes rested on Shelton, fanatical and
dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal; he was continually
sucking in his lips, as though determined to subdue 'the flesh. "You
should come here often," he said to Shelton, as the latter received
checkmate; "you 'd get some good practice. We've several very fair
players. You're not as good as Jones or Bartholomew," he added to
Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a duty to p