They were both comparatively young men. The elder of the two, a big, athletic fellow with smooth face and strong jaw, did not appear to be much over thirty-five. His companion was about the same age. Both had the blasé air of men who had lived and lived hard. All of life's fiercer joys they had known to excess, which explained, perhaps, why they were tired and disillusionized long before they had attained their prime. With a gesture of disgust, the elder man threw down his paper, and, snatching up a glass of ice-water, swallowed the refreshing contents at a gulp.
"It's no use, Fred!" he exclaimed. "I'm no good for that late bumming. I guess I'm getting old. Those midnight orgies never did agree with me. Hot birds and cold wine are a barbaric mixture, anyhow. I'm going to cut it out—do you understand?—cut it out. So don't ask me again—it's no use. I've got a fearful headache this morning—and I'm so sleepy that I'd like to go to bed for a week. It's idiotic for a man to make such an infernal ass of himself. It knocks one out and renders one unfit for business. How can I go down town and understand what I'm doing when I've got such a head on as this? There's a directors' meeting to-day, too—very important. What time was it when we got home?"
"About three o'clock, I should say," rejoined his vis-à-vis laconically, without looking up from his newspaper.
In the fifteen years that they had been intimate friends Fred Hadley had grown so accustomed to these periodical outbursts from his old chum Bob Stafford that he seldom paid the slightest heed to his protests. Both self-made men, each had started practically in the gutter and by sheer dint of grit and energy forged his way to the front, the one as a captain of industry, the other as a promoter in railroading and finance. Men of exceptional capacity, success had come easily to them, and with success had come money and power. Hadley was now vice-president of one of the biggest steel concerns in the country, and Stafford had been even more successful. Attracted to railroading he had found employment with a western road, and soon displayed such a positive genius for organization that he quickly excited the attention of eastern railroad men. Quick promotion followed, until, at the end of ten years, he became himself a power in the railroad world. Shrewd deals in Wall Street had already brought him wealth, and the age of thirty-eight found him in control of half a dozen systems, his fortune already estimated at several millions, and his name in the railroad world one to conjure with, not only in Wall Street, but from New York to Frisco.
Irritated at his companion's silence, Stafford repeated more loudly:
"Do you hear? I'm going to cut it out!"
At last Hadley, his ire roused, looked up.
"Look here, Bob," he exclaimed impatiently, "you make me tired. You're a game sport, I don't think. It wasn't Maude's little party that knocked you out." Pointing significantly to the empty bottles of champagne on the side tables, he went on: "That's what did you up. Why did you soak yourself with champagne when you got home? Do you know you got away with two quarts of the stuff?"
Stafford passed a hand over his burning brow.
"The deuce I did! I don't remember. I must have been drunk when I got home. I took the 'fizz' to sober up on. Why did you let me?"