THE BRASS BOWL
at a club, and then, prolonged far into the small hours, the session around some green-covered table in a close room reeking with the fumes of good tobacco and hot with the fever of gambling. …
Abstractedly Maitland frowned, tersely summing up: "Beastly!"—in an undertone.
At this the green car wheeled abruptly round a corner below Thirty-fourth Street, slid half a block or more east, and came to a palpitating halt. Maitland, looking up, recognized the entrance to his apartments, and sighed with relief for the brief respite from boredom that was to be his. He rose, negligently shaking off his duster, and stepped down to the sidewalk.
Somebody in the car called a warning after him, and turning for a moment he stood at attention, an eyebrow raised quizzically, cigarette drooping from a corner of his mouth, hat pushed back from his forehead, hands in coat pockets: a tall, slender, sparely-built figure of a man, clothed immaculately in flannels.
When at length he was able to make himself heard,
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