“Shall I see you fellows before the blow-off?”
“I scarcely think so.”
“Then if you're through with me, I'll bid you all good-bye and good luck. I'll have dinner with you in the palace Sunday evening.”
“Taken.”
“May I bring a guest?”
“By all means.”
Webster shook hands with the trio and departed for his hotel. For the first time in many years he was heavy of heart, crushed. “Neddy Jerome was right,” he soliloquized. “This is the last place on earth for me to have come to. I've made Neddy sore on me, and he's lost patience and put another man in the job he promised me; I've raised Billy's hopes sky-high and had to bet forty thousand dollars to keep them there; I've been fool enough to fall in love with my friend's fiancée; I'm a human cat's-paw, and the finest thing I can do now is to go out next Sunday morning with that machine-gun company from Leber's warehouse and get killed. And I would, too, in a holy second, if killing a dozen of these spiggoties were part of a mining engineer's business. I just don't belong in this quarrel and I cannot kill for pleasure or profit. All I get out of this deal is gratitude and empty honour, where I dreamed of love and a home in my old age. John Stuart Webster, the family friend! Well, after all, it isn't every old sour-dough that has an opportunity to be a liberator, and even if I have lost Dolores, I have this melancholy satisfaction: I have a rattling good chance of getting that scrubby American consul.”