“How perfectly outrageous! Why, Caliph, I would have let him sue me.”
“I would have, too—but I didn't. I induced him to settle for one hundred thousand shares of stock in my copper prospect. The par value was a dollar a share, and I was going to sell a block at ten cents, but in view of his high professional standing I let him have it for a nickel a share. I imagine he still has it. I bought back later all the other stock I sold, because the property was worthless, and in order to be a sport I offered him five hundred dollars for his block, but he thought I was trying to swindle him and asked five thousand.”
“Oh, Caliph!”
“Wonderful game, isn't it—this game of life. So sweet when a fellow's taking chances! Now that I am fairly prosperous again, the only thing in life that really matters is the uncertainty as to whether, when finally I do leave Sobrante, I shall ride to the steamship landing in a hack or a hearse.”
“But you could go in a hack this morning and avoid that uncertainty.”
“The millionaire drudge I told you of could have gone to five in a pretty villa on the Riviera, but she chose a miner's boarding-house.”
“Then why,” she persisted, “did you leave the United States with the firm intention of remaining in Sobrante indefinitely, change your mind before you were here eight hours, and cable this Neddy Jerome person you would return in sixty or ninety days—and the following morning decide to remain, after all!”
“My dear young lady, if I changed my clothes as often as I change my mind, the what-you-may-call-'em chaps that manufacture Society Brand clothes couldn't keep me dressed.”
“But why?”
“That,” he answered gravely, “is a secret.”