you been?”
John Stuart Webster beamed happily upon his friend. “Well, Neddy, you old stocking-knitter,” he replied quizzically, “since that is the case, I'm not surprised at your failure to find me. You've known me long enough to have remembered to confine your search to the uncivilized reaches.”
“Well, you're here, at any rate, and I'm happy. Now you'll settle down.”
“Hardly, Neddy. I'm young yet, you know—only forty. Still a real live man and not quite ready to degenerate into a card-playing, eat-drink-and-be-merry, die-of-inanition, sink-to-oblivion, and go-to-hell fireplace spirit!” And he prodded Jerome in the short ribs with a tentative thumb that caused the old man to wince. He turned to greet the halfdozen card-players who had looked up at his noisy entrance—deciding that since they were strangers to him they were mere half-baked young whelps but lately graduated from some school of mines—and permitted his friend to drag him downstairs to the deserted lounge, where Jerome paused in the middle of the room and renewed his query:
“Johnny, where have you been?”
“Lead me to a seat, O thou of little manners,” Webster retorted. “Here, boy! Remove my property and guard it well. I will stay and disport myself.” And he suffered himself to be dispossessed of his hat, gloves, and stick. “It used to be the custom here,” he resumed, addressing Jerome, “that when one of the Old Guard returned, he was obliged to ask his friends to indicate their poison——”
“Where have you been, I ask?”
“Out in Death Valley, California, trying to pry loose a fortune.”
“Did you pry it?”
John Stuart Webster arched his eyebrows in mock reproach. “And you can see my new suit, Neddy, my sixteen-dollar, made-to-order shoes, and my horny hoofs encased in silken hose—and ask that question? Freshly shaved and ironed and almost afraid to sit down and get wrinkles in my trousers! Smell that!” He blew a cloud of cigar smoke into Jerome's smiling face. The latter sniffed. “It smells expensive,” he replied.
“Yes, and you can bet it tastes
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