nd
the strength of the picture. They were but moths, fluttering about in their
own doom, contending with each other to see which should quickest achieve
destruction.

For several minutes Aldous scanned the faces in the big tent-hall, and
nowhere did he see DeBar. He dropped out, and continued leisurely along the
lighted way until he came to Lovak's huge black-and-white striped
soup-tent. At ten o'clock, and until twelve, this was as crowded as the
dance-hall. Aldous knew Lovak, the Hungarian.

Through Lovak he had found the key that had unlocked for him many curious
and interesting things associated with that powerful Left Arm of the Empire
Builders--the Slav. Except for a sprinkling of Germans, a few Italians, and
now and then a Greek or Swiss, only the Slavs filled Lovak's place!--Slavs
from all the Russias and the nations south: the quick and chattering Polak;
the thick-set, heavy-jowled Croatian; the silent and dangerous-eyed
Lithuanian. All came in for Lovak's wonderful soup, which he sold in big
yellow bowls at ten cents a bowl--soup of barley, rice, and cabbage, of
beef and mutton, of everything procurable out of which soup could be made,
and, whether of meat or vegetable, smelling to heaven of garlic.

Fifty men were eating when Aldous went in, devouring their soup with the
utter abandon and joy of the Galician, so that the noise they made was like
the noise of fifty pigs at fifty troughs. Now and then DeBar, the
half-breed, came here for soup, and Aldous searched quickly for him. He was
turning to go when his friend, Lovak, came to him. No, Lovak had not seen
DeBar. But he had news. That day the authorities--the police--had
confiscated twenty dressed hogs, and in each porcine carcass they had found
four-quart bottles of whisky, artistically imbedded in the leaf-lard fat.
The day before those same authorities had confiscated a barrel of
"kerosene." They were becoming altogether too officious, Lovak thought.

Aldous went on. He looked in at a dozen restaurants, and twice as many
soft-drink emporiums, where phonographs were worked until they were cracked
and dizzy. He stopped at a small tobacco shop, and entered to buy himself
some cigars. There was one other customer ahead of him. He was lighting a
cigar, and the light of a big hanging lamp flashed on a diamond ring. Over
his sputtering match his eyes met those of John Aldous. They were dark
eyes, neither brown nor black, but dark, with the keenness and strange