The dummy-chucker turned languidly in his chair. He eyed his host curiously.
"Listen, feller," he said: "I told you that I drew the line at murder, didn't I?"
"'Murder?' What do you mean? What murder was involved?"
The dummy-chucker idly blew a smoke ring.
"Murder of faith in a woman's heart," he said slowly. "Look at me! Do I look the sort who'd play your dirty game?"
"Bannon," he called. The valet entered the room. "Take the clothes off this--this bum!" snapped the host. "Give him his rags."
He clenched his fists, but the dummy-chucker merely shrugged. The young man drew back while his guest followed the valet into another room.
Ten minutes later, the host seized the dummy-chucker by the tattered sleeve of his grimy jacket. He drew him before the mirror.
"Take a look at yourself, you--bum!" he snapped. "Do you look, now, like the sort of man who'd refuse to earn an easy hundred?"
The dummy-chucker stared at himself. Gone was the debonair gentleman of a quarter of an hour ago. Instead, there leered back at him a pasty-faced, underfed vagrant, dressed in the tatters of unambitious, satisfied poverty.
"Bannon," called the host, "throw him out!"
For a moment, the dummy-chucker's shoulders squared, as they had been squared when the dinner jacket draped them. Then they sagged. He offered no resistance when Bannon seized his collar. And Bannon, the valet, was a smaller man than himself.
He cringed when the colored elevator-man sneered at him. He dodged when little Bannon, in the mirrored vestibule raised a threatening hand. And he shuffled as he turned toward Central Park.
But as he neared Columbus Circle, his gait quickened. At Finisterre Joe's he'd get a drink. He tumbled in his pockets. Curse the luck! He'd given every cent of his afternoon earnings to doormen and pages and coat-room girls!
His pace slackened again as he turned down Broadway. His feet were dragging as he reached the Concorde moving-picture theater. His hand, sunk deep in his torn pocket, touched something. It was a tiny piece of soap.
As the audience filed sadly out from the teary, gripping drama of "She Loved And Lost," the dummy-chucker's hand went from his pocket to his lips. He reeled, staggered, fell. His jaws moved savagely. Foam appeared upon his lips. A fat woman shrank away from him, then leaned forward in quick sympathy.