the Dummy
had written upon his pad--so hastily and angrily that the words could
hardly be read--that he would not play with professional gamblers, men
who supported themselves by their winnings. Damn it! one had to be a
gentleman.

Next, Vandover had tried to borrow some money of Charlie Geary. Geary
had told him that he could not afford as much as Vandover needed. Then
Vandover became enraged. He had long since seen that Geary had
practically swindled him out of his block in the Mission, and at that
very moment the huge boot and shoe "concern" was completing the factory
built upon the ground that Vandover had once owned. Geary had cleared
seven thousand dollars on his "deal." His refusal to loan his old-time
friend fifty dollars upon this occasion had exasperated Vandover out of
all bounds. There was a scene. Vandover told Geary what he thought of
his "deal" in very plain words. They shouted "swindler" and "gambler"
into each other's faces; the whole office was aroused; Vandover was
ejected by force. On a stair landing half-way to the street he sat down
and cried into his arms folded upon his knees. When he returned to his
room he had a sudden return of his dreadful nervous malady and barked
and whined under the bed.

Then Vandover wrote a fifty-dollar check on the bank--the same bank that
had just notified him that he was overdrawn--and passed it upon young
Haight. How he came to do the thing he could not tell; it might have
been the influence of Geary's successful robbery, or it might have been
that he had at last lost all principle, all sense of honour and
integrity. At any rate, he could not bring himself to feel very sorry.
He knew that young Haight would not prosecute him for the dishonesty; he
traded upon Haight's magnanimity; he only felt glad that he had the
fifty dollars. But by this time Vandover did not even wonder at his own
baseness and degradation. A few years ago this would have been the case;
now his character was so changed that the theft seemed somehow
consistent. He had destroyed young Haight's friendship for him. He had
cast from him his college chum, his best friend, but neither did this
affect him. Nothing made much difference to him now.

Nevertheless, Vandover was evicted from the Lick House three days after
he had stolen young Haight's money. Instead of paying his bills with the
amount, he gambled it away in a back room of a new cafe on Market Street
with Toby, the red-eyed waiter from the