restaurants—for people of different ideas and interests and moral standards to meet naturally upon a common ground....

[3]

A little man, swart of face, his mustache tightly waxed, and in the smartest evening dress that convention permits the male, paused and spoke to Clifford—a gentleman whom most of the patrons of the place knew, if they knew him at all, as Monsieur Le Bain. Though the master of this ornate pleasure palace, he spoke obsequiously.

Clifford liked to see the great little man squirm. “Police trouble you much here?” he asked.

“No, Bob,—I never see a policeman here, except when a captain or an inspector comes in to eat,” the great restaurateur said nervously.

“Not like the old days downtown—with their raids—eh, Joe?”

“Nothing of that sort—ever!” And with a quick[4] look around that showed he feared some one might have overheard these sentences and guessed what lay behind them, he said something about being needed on his ballroom floor and hurried away.

[4]

Clifford watched the famous restaurateur, again smiling grimly. If these people here—the respectable ones at least—knew the record of Joe Gordon (which again was not the name given him at birth), knew from what places and occupations he had made his way to his eminence of foremost host and impresario of prandial entertainment—what a panic there would be! (Or would there be a panic?) Life was certainly strange!—with its emergencies, its juxtapositions, its crossing of threads—strange at least to him who was always seeing behind the scenes. Yes, life was certainly strange!...

Clifford’s meditations were interrupted by a hearty, “Hello, Bob,” and by a large hand gripping one of his.

“Hello, Uncle George. I’d begun to think—”

“Hold on, son,” and Clifford’s host halted the talk by raising one hand like a traffic policeman and with the other reaching for the dinner card. While the long order was being dictated, Clifford gazed impatiently across at his companion, wondering what this appointment was about. His host was a large man who once might have been bulbous, but who now had deflated little balloons of skin hanging beneath eyes and chin and jaws. His few short gray hairs were divided into two precisely equal portions;[5] his eyebrows were entirely gone, and of eyelashes he had almost none; his eyes were smallish, gray, 

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