The Fighting Chance

"Oh," he groaned, "what an ass I am!" And he got out of his cab in front of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.

The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean fashion. There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy, Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.

All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.

Yet there was something about it all--about the bluish silvery half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid in her flamboyant cap and apron--that arrested attention and fixed it. The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains were drawn over the lace window hangings; no shadows anywhere, no half-lights. The very stillness was gay with suspense, like a pretty woman's suppressed laughter glimmering in her eyes.

And into this tinted light, framed in palest blue and white, waddled Mortimer, appropriate as a June-bug scrambling in a Sèvres teacup.

"Anybody here?" he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny grand piano cased in unvarnished Circassian walnut.

"There is nobody at home, sir," said the maid.

"Music lesson over?"

"Yes, sir, at three."

He began to ascend the stairway, breathing heavily, thud, thud over the deep velvet strip, his fat hand grasping the banister rail.

Somewhere on the second floor a small dog barked, and Mortimer traversed the ball and opened the door into a room hung with gold Spanish leather and pale green curtains.

"Hello, Tinto!" he said affably as a tiny Japanese spaniel hurled herself at him, barking furiously, then began writhing and weaving herself about him, gurgling recognition and welcome.

He sat down heavily in a padded easy-chair. The spaniel sprang into his lap, wheezing, sniffling, goggling its protruding eyes. Mortimer liked the dog, but he didn't like what the owner of the dog said about the resemblance between his own and Tinto's eyes.

"Get down!" he said; "you're shedding black and white hairs all over me." But the dog didn't want to get down, and Mortimer's good nature permitted her to curl up on his fat knees and sleep that nervous, twitching sleep peculiar to overpampered toy canines.