were some bits of white lying in the otherwise empty tray--the
fragments of a torn-up visiting-card. A portion of the engraved script
caught my eye, "Indi--"

It was not difficult to piece together the bits of pasteboard, for I
knew pretty well what I should find. Completed, the puzzle read, "Mr.
Esper Indiman," and in pencil, "Call at 4020 Madison Avenue at
half-past seven this evening."

So there were three of us--if not more. Rather absurd this assignment
of a separate quarter of an hour to each interview--quite as though Mr.
Indiman desired to engage a valet and we were candidates for the
position. Evidently, an eccentric person, but it's a queer world
anyhow, as most of us know. There's my own case, for example. I'm
supposed to be a gentleman of leisure and means. Leisure, certainly,
but the means are slender enough, and proceeding in a diminishing
ratio. That's the penalty of having been born a rich man's son and
educated chiefly in the arts of riding off at polo and thrashing a
single-sticker to windward in a Cape Cod squall. But I sha'n't say a
word against the governor, God bless him! He gave me what I thought I
wanted, and it wasn't his fault that an insignificant blood-clot should
beat him out on that day of days--the corner in "R. P." It was never
the Chicago crowd that could have downed him--I'm glad to remember that.

Well, there being only the two of us, it didn't matter so much; it
wasn't as though there were a lot of helpless womenfolk to consider.
After the funeral and the settlement with the creditors there was
left--I'm ashamed to say how little, and, anyway, it's no one's
business; the debts were paid. What is a man to do, at thirty-odd, who
has never turned his hand to anything of use? The governor's friends?
Well, they didn't know how bad things were, and I couldn't go to them
with the truth and make them a present of my helpless, incompetent self.

And so for the last two years I've been sticking it out in a hall
bedroom, just west of the dead-line. I have a life membership in the
club--what a Christmas present that has turned out to be!--and twice in
the week I dine there. As for the rest of it, never mind--there are
things which a man can do but of which he doesn't care to speak.

The future? Ah, you can answer that question quite as well as I. Now I
had calculated that, at my present rate of expenditure, I could hold
out until Easter, but there have been contingencies. To illustrate, I
ha