He put down his oyster fork and looked me squarely in the eye. He was the same handsome, upstanding young Hercules that he had always been, but there was something new and more or less provocative in the contemptuous set of the mouth and the half belligerent emphasis of the well-defined jaw.
"You've said it, Dick; I have too much money, and other people haven't enough," was his rather enigmatical retort. Then: "You may call it madman raving if you like, but I've lost my sense of perspective; I can't tell an honest man—or woman—when I see one."
"All of which leads up to?——"
"To the thing which has brought me to New Orleans, and to my reason for wiring you from Havana. My philosophy has led me to the jumping-off place, Dick. Before I am two months older I am going to know at least one small bunch of people for what they really are under their skins. And you are going to help me to acquire this invaluable information. How does that proposal strike you?"
"It strikes me a trifle remindfully, if you insist on knowing," I said. "I haven't been altogether out of touch with the home people, and quite a few of them have had something to say about this loss of perspective that you've just confessed to. I've been writing most of the gossip off to profit and loss, but——"
"You needn't," was his brusque interruption. "As I've said, this is a pretty rotten world, if anybody should ask."
"Is it, indeed? How many millions does it take to give a man that point of view?"
"That is the devil of it," he said, with a touch of bitterness. "Will you believe me when I say that, apart from yourself and two or three other honest money-despisers like you, I don't really know, as man to man, or man to woman, half a dozen people on the face of the planet?"
"I'll believe that you think so. Still, that is all piffle, as you very well know. So far as the women are concerned, it merely means that you haven't met the one and only."
Van Dyck was silent while the waiter was placing the meat course. During the plate-changing interval I became unpleasantly conscious of the presence—the curiously obtrusive presence—of a dark-faced, black-mustachioed little man sitting two tables away, and apparently engrossed in his dinner. Why this one foreign-looking individual, out of the many late diners comfortably filling the large room, should disturb me, I could not determine; but the vague disquietude came—and remained. Twice I thought I caught the small man watching my tablemate furtively from beneath his heavy eyebrows; and when Van Dyck began to speak again, I was almost certain I detected that half mechanical cocking of an ear which betrays the intentional and eager eavesdropper.