"Dine with me here three nights hand-running and they'll let you into the Syndicate by the back door without even asking your name. P.T.A.'s one grand little motto, my boy."
"P.T.A.?"
"Pays to advertise. Paste that in your hat, keep your head small enough to wear it, and don't givadam if folks do think you're an addle-pated village cut-up, and you'll have this town at heel like a good dog as long as—well," Max wound up with a short laugh, "as long as your luck lasts."
"Yours seems to be pretty healthy—no signs of going into a premature decline."
"Ah!" said Max gloomily. "Seems!"
With a morose manner he devoted himself to his soup.
"Look me over," he requested abruptly, leaning back. "I guess I'm some giddy young buck, what?"
Whitaker reviewed the striking effect Max had created by encasing his brief neck and double chin in an old-fashioned high collar and black silk stock, beneath which his important chest was protected by an elaborately frilled shirt decorated with black pearl studs. His waist was strapped in by a pique waistcoat edged with black, and there was a distinctly perceptible "invisible" stripe in the material of his evening coat and trousers.
"Dressed up like a fool," Max summed up the ensemble before his guest could speak. "Would you believe that despair could gnaw at the vitals of any one as wonderfully arrayed?"
"I would not," Whitaker asserted.