any more than they interest me, and you're perfectly right in refusing
to listen to them."

"Umum," said the boy oddly.

"And now I'll tell you what we'll do," Johnson Boller concluded quite
happily. "You tell me where you live, and when the man drops us I'll pay
your fare home. Some class to that, eh? Going home in a taxicab after
sitting in a ten-dollar seat at a big fight! You don't get off on a
jamboree like that very often, I'll bet!"

"No," the boy said thoughtfully.

"So here's the little old Hotel Lasande where Mr. Fry lives," Mr. Boller
finished cheerfully, "and where shall I tell the man to set you down,
kid?"

He had settled the matter, of course. Never in this world could the
little ragamuffin resist the temptation of returning to his tenement
home, or whatever it was, in a taxi. Johnson Boller, rising as the
vehicle stopped, laid a kindly hand on his shoulder.

"Now, you sit over in my seat and stretch your legs while you ride,
kid--and here! Have a real cigar and feel like a real sport! Don't you
know how to bite off the end?"

"I--I don't want to bite off the end yet," the boy muttered.

"Sink your teeth in it. Now I'll get you a match."

He felt for one, did Johnson Boller, and then ceased feeling for one.
That sudden low laugh of the young man's was one of the oddest sounds he
had ever heard; moreover, as the Lasande doorman opened the door of the
taxi, he caught the same odd light in the boy's eye--and now he, too,
had risen and pulled the disreputable cap a little lower as he said:

"I won't smoke it now, thanks. I'm going upstairs and listen to Mr. Fry
for a while, I think."

CHAPTER III

Opportunity

The Hotel Lasande deserves a word or two. In the strict sense it is no
hotel at all, being merely a twenty-story pile of four and five--and
even seven and eight--room bachelor suites of the very highest class.
Moving into the Lasande and assuming one of its breath-stopping leases
is a process not unlike breaking into the most exclusive sort of club.
One is investigated, which tells it all. The Lasande, catering to the
very best and most opulent of the bachelor class, has nothing else
beneath its roof.

Silent men servants, functioning perfectly despite their apparent
woodenness, flit everywhere, invisible until needed, disappearing
instantly when the task of the moment is done. There are dining-rooms
for the few who do not dine in the privacy of their own apartments, and
there