pared to use force.

"Quit. I'll go," said Bean.

He was before a polished bar, the white-jacketed attendant of which not
only recognized the waster but seemed to divine his errand.

"Two," commanded the waster. The attendant had already reached for a
bottle of absinthe, and now busied himself with two eggs, a shaker, and
cracked ice.

"White of an egg, delicate but nourishing after bachelor dinners," said
the waster expertly.

Bean, in the polished mirror, regarded a pallid and shrinking youth whom
he knew to be himself--not a reincarnation of the Egyptian king, but
just Bunker Bean. He could not endure a long look at the thing, and
allowed his gaze to wander to the panelled woodwork of the bar.

"Fumed oak," he suggested to the waster.

But the waster pushed one of the slender-stemmed glasses toward him.

"There's the life-line, old top; cling to it! Here's a go!"

Bean drank. The beverage was icy, but it warmed him to life. The mere
white of an egg mixed with a liquid of such perfect innocence that he
recalled it from his soothing-syrup days.

"Have one with me," he said in what he knew to be a faultless bar
manner.

"Oh, I say old top," the waster protested.

"One," said Bean stubbornly.

The attendant was again busy.

"Better be careful," warned the waster. "Those things come to you and
steal their hands into yours like little innocent children, but--".

They drank. Bean felt himself bold for any situation. He would carry the
farce through if they insisted on it. He no longer planned to elude the
waster. They were in the speeding car.

"Fumed eggs!" murmured Bean approvingly.

They were inside that desolated house, the door closed fatefully upon
them. The waster disappeared. Bean heard the flapper's voice calling
cheerily to him from above stairs. A footman disapprovingly ushered him
to the midst of an immense drawing-room of most ponderous grandeur, and
left him to perish.

He sat on the edge of a chair and tried to clear his mind about this
enormity he was going to commit. False pretenses! Nothing less. He was
not a king at all. He was Bunker Bean, a stenographer, whose father
drove an express wagon, and whose grandmother had smoked a pipe. He had
never been anything more, nor ever would be. And here he
was ... pretending.

No wonder Julia had fussed! She had seen through him. How they would all
scorn him if they knew what that scoundrelly Balthasar knew. He'd made
money, but he had no ri