Part 36 (1/2)

”Excuse me,” says I, breakin' in, ”but is this to a finish? If it is, I'll send out for some throat troches.”

Larry grins and settles himself back easy in my desk chair. Great lad, this Mr. T. Lawrence Bolan! All he needs is a cape coat and a sugar-loaf hat with a silver buckle to be a stage Irishman. One of these tall, loose-hinged, awkward-gaited chaps, with wavy red hair the color of a new copper pan, also a chin dimple and a crooked mouth. By rights he should have been homely. Maybe he was too; but somehow, with that twisty smile of his workin', and them gray-blue eyes twinklin' at you, the word couldn't be said.

”Look at him, Shorty!” says Pinckney. ”Six feet of futile clay; a waster of time, money, and opportunity.”

”The three gifts that a fool tries to save and a wise man spends with a free hand,” says Larry. ”Give me a cigarette.”

”How much, now, did you lose to that crowd of bridge sharks last night?”

demands Pinckney, pa.s.sin' over a gold case.

”Not my self-respect, anyway,” says Larry. ”Was I to pa.s.s cowardly with a hundred aces in hand? And I had the fun of making that Boomer-Day person quit bidding on eight hearts. How she did glare as she doubled me!”

”Set you six hundred, I hear,” says Pinckney. ”At a quarter the point that's no cheap fun.”

”Who asks for cheap fun?” says Larry. ”I paid the shot, didn't I?”

”And now?” asks Pinckney.

Larry shrugs his shoulders. ”The usual thing,” says he; ”only it happens a little earlier in the month. I'm flat broke, of course.”

”Then why in the name of all folly will you not borrow a couple of hundred from me?” demands Pinckney.

”Would I pay it back?” says Larry. ”No, I would not. So it would be begging, or stealing? You see how awkward that makes it, old chap?”

”But, deuce take it! what are you to do for the next three weeks, you know?” insists Pinckney.

”Disappear,” says Larry, wavin' his cigarette jaunty, ”and then--

”The haunts that knew him once No more shall know.

The halls where once he trod With stately tread--er-- Tum-ti-iddity-- As the dead--

or words, my dear Pinckney, much to that effect. My next remittance should be here by the third.”

”When you'll reappear and do it all over again,” says Pinckney.

”In which you're quite wrong,” says Larry. ”Not that I am bitten by remorse; but I weary of your game. It's a bit stupid, you know,--your mad rus.h.i.+ng about here and there, plays, dinners, dances, week-ends.

You're mostly a good sort; but you've no poise, no repose. Kittens chasing your tails! It leaves no chance to dream dreams.”

”Listen,” says Pinckney, ”to that superior being, the lordly Briton, utter his usual piffle! I suppose you'd like to marry, settle down on a hundred-acre estate nine miles from nowhere, and do the country gentleman?”

”It would be the making of me,” says Larry, ”and I could be reasonably happy at it.”

”Then why not do it?” demands Pinckney.

”On a thousand pounds a year?” says Larry. ”Go to!”

”The fact remains,” says Pinckney, ”that you have for an uncle the Earl of Kerrymull.”

”And that I'm his best hated nephew, paid to keep out of his sight,”

comes back Larry.

”But you are where an Earl-uncle counts for most,” suggests Pinckney.