Nevertheless, he finished his meal leisurely. When the check had been paid, he arose and made his way slowly toward the door, without a backward glance.
His preoccupation prevented his noticing a rather odd incident which happened on his way out. Near the door, sitting alone at a small table, was a short, thickset man of forty odd, with a rather full, round face, helped out to some degree by a pointed Vandyke beard, tinged with gray.
During the progress of the meal he had been not a little interested in Lawrence, if one could judge by the frequent keen glances he shot across the room. But now, as Barry came toward him, he swiftly dropped his head, seemingly absorbed in the menu which lay before him. Not until the younger man had disappeared did he raise his eyes, and then a close observer might have noticed in them a curious, enigmatic expression.
Within three minutes the table by the door was empty.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GATES OF CHANCE.
At the Fifth Avenue corner Lawrence paused, leaning on his stick, and glancing up and down the brilliant thoroughfare. Though it was too late for the theater, the night was still young, and he was wondering just how he would put in the hours before bedtime.
In the old days, before his disgrace, he would have headed straight for the Harvard Club, on Forty-fourth Street, and been sure of a pleasant, lazy evening; but now the thought did not appeal to him. In some ways Barry was unusually sensitive, and it had happened that the few acquaintances he encountered shortly after leaving the bank seemed cool and offish in their manner.
Whether that was really so, and chance had thrown the caddishly inclined in his way, or whether he had simply imagined it all, did not matter now. The result had been to embitter the young man, and make him determined to take no further chances of snubbing from those he had supposed his friends.
The club was, therefore, impossible. It was equally out of the question to look up any one else he had known in his prosperous days. As for relatives—well, Barry was singularly deficient in that respect. Save some cousins in Boston, and an aunt living in Providence, he was quite alone in the world.