one without you to help in the games
and everything. There's no use denying it, Mr. Leary--you were the life
of the party, absolutely!"

At least twice during the night Mrs. Carroway had told Mr. Leary this,
and now as he bade her farewell she was saying it once more in
practically the same words, when Mrs. Carroway's coloured maid, Blanche,
touched him on the arm.

"'Scuse me, suh," apologised Blanche, "but the hall man downstairs he
send up word jes' now by the elevator man 'at you'd best be comin' right
on down now, suh, effen you expects to git a taxicab. He say to tell you
they ain't but one taxicab left an' the driver of 'at one's been
waitin' fur hours an' he act like he might go way any minute now. 'At's
whut the hall man send word, suh."

Blanche had brought his overcoat along and held it up for him, imparting
to the service that small suggestion of a ceremonial rite which the
members of her race invariably do display when handling a garment of
richness of texture and indubitable cost. Mr. Leary let her help him
into the coat and slipped largess into her hand, and as he stepped
aboard the waiting elevator for the downward flight Mrs. Carroway's
voice came fluting to him, once again repeating the flattering phrase:
"You surely were the life of the party!"

II

It was fine to have been the life of the party. It was not quite so fine
to discover that the taxicab to which he must entrust himself for the
long ride up to West Eighty-fifth Street was a most shabby-appearing
vehicle, the driver of which, moreover, as Mr. Leary could divine even
as he crossed the sidewalk, had wiled away the tedium of waiting by
indulgence in draughts of something more potent than the chill air of
latish November. Mr. Leary peered doubtfully into the illuminated
countenance but dulled eyes of the driver and caught a whiff of a breath
alcoholically fragrant, and he understood that the warning relayed to
him by Blanche had carried a subtle double meaning. Still, there was no
other taxicab to be had. The street might have been a byway in old
Pompeii for all the life that moved within it. Washington Square, facing
him, was as empty as a graveyard generally is at this hour, and the
semblance of a conventional graveyard in wintertime was helped out by a
light snow--the first of the season--sifting down in large damp flakes.

Twice and thrice he repeated the address, speaking each time sharply and
distinctly, before the meaning seemed