The Fighting Chance

This being about all she could think of to make mischief for two men whose recent companionship had nourished and irritated her, she shipped her trunks by express, packed her jewel-case and valise, and met Desmond at the station.

Desmond had business in Europe; Lydia had as much business there as anywhere; and, although she had been faithless to Mortimer for a comparatively short time, within that time Desmond already had sworn at her and struck her. So she was quite ready to follow Desmond anywhere in this world or the next. And that, too, had not made her the more considerate toward Mortimer.

When the latter returned from the races to find her gone the last riddled props to what passed for his manhood gave way and the rotten fabric came crashing into the mud.

He had loved her as far as he had been capable of imitating that passion on the transposed plane to which he had fallen; he was stupefied at first, then grew violent with the furniture, then hysterically profane, then pitiable in the abandoned degradation of his grief. And, suspecting Desmond, he started to find him. They put him out of Desmond's club-house when he became noisy; they refused him admittance to several similar resorts where his noise threatened to continue; his landlord lost no time in interviewing him upon the subject of damage to furniture from kicks and to the walls and carpets from the contents of smashed bottles.

Creditors with sharp noses scented the whirlwind afar off and hemmed him in with unsettled accounts, mostly hers. Somebody placed a lien on his horses; a deputy sheriff began to follow him about; all credit ceased as by magic, and men crossed the street to avoid meeting with an old companion in direst need.

Still, alternately stupefied by his own grief and maddened into the necessity for action, he packed a suitcase, crawled out of the rear door, toiled across country and found a farmer to drive him twenty miles over a sandy road to a local railroad crossing, where he managed to board a train for Albany.

At Albany, as he stood panting and sweating on the long, concrete platform which paralleled track No. 1, he saw a private car, switched from a Boston and Albany train, shunted to the rear of the Merchants' Express.

The private car was lettered in gold on the central panel, "Algonquin." He boarded the Pullman coupled to it forward, pushed through the vestibule, shoved aside the Japanese steward and darky cook, forcing his way straight into the private car. Quarrier, reading a magazine, looked up at him in astonishment. For a full moment neither spoke. Then Mortimer dropped his suit-case, sat down in an armchair opposite Quarrier, and leisurely mopped his reeking face and neck.