. James Club, his own home on Riverside Drive where a dinner fit for
an epicure and served by Jason, that most perfect of butlers, awaited
him, and Marlianne's, Jimmie Dale, driving in alone in his touring car
from an afternoon's golf, had chosen--Marlianne's.

Marlianne's, if such a thing as Bohemianism, or, rather, a concrete
expression of it exists, was Bohemian. A two-piece string orchestra
played valiantly to the accompaniment of a hoarse-throated piano; and
between courses the diners took up the refrain--and, as it was always
between courses with some one, the place was a bedlam of noisy riot.
Nevertheless, it was Marlianne's--and Jimmie Dale liked Marlianne's. He
had dined there many times before, as he had just dined in the person of
Jimmie Dale, the millionaire, his high-priced imported car at the curb
of the shabby street outside--and he had dined there, disreputable in
attire, seedy in appearance, with the police yelping at his heels, as
Larry the Bat. In either character Marlianne's had welcomed him with
equal courtesy to its spotted linen and most excellent table-d'hote with
VIN ORDINAIRE--for fifty cents.

And now, in the act of reaching into his pocket for the change to pay
his bill, Jimmie Dale seemed suddenly to experience some difficulty in
finding what he sought, and his fingers went fumbling from one pocket
to another. Two men at the table in front of him were talking--their
voices, over a momentary lull in violin squeaks, talk, laughter,
singing, and the clatter of dishes, reached him:

"Carling commit suicide! Not on your life! No; of course he didn't! It
was that cursed Gray Seal croaked him, just as sure as you sit in that
chair!"

The other grunted. "Yes; but what'd the Gray Seal want to pinch a
hundred thousand out of the bank for, and then give it back again the
next morning?"

"What's he done a hundred other things for to cover up the real object
of what he's after?" retorted the first speaker, with a short, vicious
laugh; then, with a thump of his fist on the table: "The man's a devil,
a fiend, and anywhere else but New York he'd have been caught and sent
to the chair where he belongs long ago, and--"

A burst of ragtime drowned out the man's words. Jimmie Dale placed a
fifty-cent piece and a tip beside it on his dinner check, pushed
back his chair, and rose from the table. There was a half-tolerantly
satirical, half-angry glint in his dark, steady eyes. It was not only
the police who