“My reputation would stand a good deal of knocking about,” laughed Bright. “I think my character would bear three nights a week in a Bowery saloon and spare time put in now and then in a University Place bar, without any particular harm.”
“By Jove! I wish mine would!”
“It won’t,” said Bright. “But I wasn’t thinking of your reputation, nor of anything especial except that things are generally better at a club than at a hotel.”
“The Brut is good here. I’ve tried it—often. Come along.”
“I’ll wait for you outside. I’m not thirsty.”
“I told you so,” retorted Ralston. “You’re afraid somebody will see you.”
“You’re an idiot, Jack!”
Thereupon Bright led the way into the gorgeous bar, a place probably unique in the world. A number of pictures by great French masters hang on the walls—pictures unrivalled, perhaps, in beauty of execution and insolence of conception. The rest is a blaze of polished marble and woodwork and gleaming metal.
Ralston nodded to the bar-tender.
“What will you have?” he asked, turning to Bright.