nominally sold only the soft drinks
permitted by the wise men of the Capital, Barney leaned at his ease upon
the bar and remarked: "Give me some of the real stuff, Tim, and forget
that eye-dropper the boss bought you last week." Barney had a drink of
the real stuff, and then another drink, in the measuring of neither of
which had an eye-dropper been involved.

After that, much heartened, he put two dollars upon the bar and went
his way. His course took the dapper Barney into three of the gayest
restaurants in the Times Square section; and in these Barney paused long
enough to speak to a few after-theater supper-parties. For this was the
hour when Barney paid his social calls; he was very strict with himself
upon this point. Barney was really by way of being a rising figure in
this particular circle of New York society composed of people who had
or believed they had an interest in the theater, of expensively gowned
women the foreground of whose lives was most attractive, but whose
background was perhaps wisely kept out of the picture, and of moneyed
young men who gloried in the idea that they were living the life. These
social calls from gay table to gay table, at all of which Barney was
welcome--for here Barney showed only his most attractive surfaces, his
most brilliant facets--were in truth a very important part of Barney's
business.

A little later, alone at a corner table in a quieter restaurant, Barney
was eating his supper and making an inventory of his prospects. He was
in a very exultant mood. The whiskey he had drunk had given broad
wings to his self-satisfaction; and what he was now sipping from his
tea-cup--it was not tea, for Barney was on the proper terms with his
waiter here--this draught from his tea-cup tipped these broad wings at a
yet more soaring angle.

Yes, he had certainly put it over so far. And Maggie would certainly
prove a winner. Those fair women he had chatted with as he had moved
from table to table, why, they'd be less than dirt compared to Maggie
when Maggie was rigged out and readied up and the stage was set. And it
had been he, Barney Palmer, who had been the first to discover Maggie's
latent possibilities!

He had an eye beyond mere surfaces, had Barney. He had used women in the
past in putting over many of his more private transactions (and had done
so partly for the reason that using women so was eminently "safe"--this
despite his violent outburst of sneering disdain at Larry whe