"Never call you Per—"
"Don't say it!"
"Oh, all right—all right," George agreed plaintively. "And if I promise, I'm in on that theatre party?"
"That's my offer."
"It's hard," George sighed regretfully—"damn' hard. But whatever you say goes. I'll keep your secret."
"Good!" P. Sybarite extended one of his small, delicately modelled hands. "Shake," said he, smiling wistfully.
II
INSPIRATION
When they had locked in the Genius of the Place to batten upon itself until seven o'clock Monday morning, P. Sybarite and Mr. Bross, with at least every outward semblance of complete amity, threaded the roaring congestion in narrow-chested Frankfort Street, boldly breasted the flood tide of homing Brooklynites, won their way through City Hall Park, and were presently swinging shoulder to shoulder up the sunny side of lower Broadway.
To be precise, the swinging stride was practised only by Mr. Bross; P. Sybarite, instinctively aware that any such mode of locomotion would ill become one of his inches, contented himself with keeping up—his gait an apparently effortless, tireless, and comfortable amble, congruent with bowed shoulders, bended head, introspective eyes, and his aspect in general of patient preoccupation.
From time to time George, who was maintaining an unnatural and painful silence, his mental processes stagnant with wonder and dull resentment, eyed his companion askance, with furtive suspicion. Their association was now one of some seven years' standing; and it seemed a grievous thing that, after posing so long as the patient butt of his rude humour, P.S. should have so suddenly turned and proved himself the better man—and that not mentally alone.
"Lis'n—" George interjected of a sudden.
P. Sybarite started. "Eh?" he enquired blankly.
"I wanna know where you picked up all that classy footwork."
"Oh," returned P.S., depreciatory, "I used to spar a bit with the fellows when I was a—ah—when I was younger."
"When you was at what?" insisted Bross, declining to be fobbed off with any such flimsy evasion.
"When I was at liberty to."
"Huh! You mean, when you was at college."
"Please yourself," said P. Sybarite wearily.
"Well, you was at college oncet, wasn't you?"
"I was," P.S. admitted with reluctance; "but I never graduated. When I was twenty-one I had to quit to go to work for Whigham & Wimper."
"G'wan," commented the other. "They ain't been in business twenty-five years."
"I'm only thirty-one."
"More news for Sweeny. You'll never see forty again."
"That statement," said P. Sybarite with some asperity, "is an uncivil untruth dictated by a spirit of gratuitous contentiousness—"
"Good God!" cried Bross in alarm. "I'm wrong and you're right and I won't do it again—and forgive me for livin'!"
"With pleasure," agreed P. Sybarite pleasantly. …
"It's a funny world," George resumed in philosophic humour, after a time. "You wouldn't think I could work in the same dump with you seven years and only be startin' to find out things about you—like to-day. I always thought your name was Pete—honest."
"Continue to think so," P. Sybarite advised briefly.
"Your people had money, didn't they, oncet?"
"I've been told so, but if true, it only goes to prove there's nothing in the theory of heredity. … "
"I gotcha," announced Bross, upon prolonged and painful analysis.
"How?" asked P. Sybarite, who had fallen to thinking of other matters.
"I mean, I just dropped to your high-sign to mind my own business. All right, P.S. Far be it from me to wanta pry into your Past. Besides, I'm scared to—never can tell what I'll turn up—like, f'rinstance, Per—"
"Steady!"
"Like that they usta call you when you was innocent, I mean."
To this P. Sybarite made no response; and George subsided into morose reflections. It irked him sore to remember he had been worsted by the meek little slip of a bookkeeper trotting so quietly at his elbow.
He was a man of his word, was George Bross; not for anything would he have gone back on his promise to keep secret that afternoon's titillating discovery; likewise he was a covetous soul, loath to forfeit the promised treat; withal he was human (after his kind) and since reprisals were not barred by their understanding, he began then and there to ponder the same. One way or another, that day's humiliation must be balanced; else he might never again hold up his head in the company of gentlemen of spirit.
But how to compass this desire, frankly puzzled him. It were cowardly to contemplate knockin' the block off'n P. Sybarite; the disparity of their statures forebade; moreover, George entertained a vexatious suspicion that P. Sybarite's explanation on his recent downfall had not been altogether disingenuous; he didn't quite believe it had been due solely to his own clumsiness and an adventitious foot.
"That sort of thing don't never happen," George assured himself privately. "I was outclassed, all right, all right. What I wanna know is: where'd he couple up with the ring-wisdom?"
Repeated if covert glances at his companion supplied no clue; P. Sybarite's face remained as uncommunicative as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an almost childlike pleasure in anticipation of the evening's promised amusement.
Suddenly it was borne in upon the shipping clerk that in the probable arrangement of the proposed party he would be expected to dance attendance upon Miss Violet Prim, leaving P. Sybarite free to devote himself to Miss Lessing. Whereupon George scowled darkly.
"P.S.'s got his nerve with him," he protested privately, "to cop out the one pippin in the house all for his lonely. It's a wonder he wouldn't slip her a chanct to enjoy herself with summon' her own age. …
"Not," he admitted ruefully, "that I'd find it healthy to pull any rough stuff with Vi lookin' on. I don't even like to think of myself lampin' any other skirt while Violet's got her wicks trimmed and burnin' bright."
Then he made an end to envy for the time being, and turned his attention to more pressing concerns; but though he pondered with all his might and main, it seemed impossible to excogitate any way to square his account with P. Sybarite. And when, at Thirty-eighth Street, the latter made an excuse to part with George, instead of going home in his company, the shipping clerk was too thoroughly disgusted to question the subterfuge. He was, indeed, a bit relieved; the temporary dissociation promised just so much more time for solitary conspiracy.
Turning west, he was presently prompted by that arch-comedian Destiny (disguised as Thirst) to drop into Clancey's for a shell of beer.
Now in Clancey's George found a crumpled copy of the Evening Journal almost afloat on the high-tide of the dregs-drenched bar. Rescuing the sheet, he smoothed it out, examined (grinning) its daily meed of comics, read every word on the "Sports Page," ploughed through the weekly vaudeville charts, scanned the advertisements, and at length reviewed the news columns with a listless eye.
It may have been the stimulation of his drink, but it was probably nothing more nor less than jealousy that sparked his sluggish imagination as he contemplated a two-column reproduction in coarse half-tone of a photograph entitled