leanings toward more artistic pursuits than business. He was credited
with sketching a little, writing a little; and he was credited with
having received a very snug amount from the combine to which he sold out
his safe-manufacturing interests. He lived a bachelor life--his mother
had been dead many years--in the house that his father had left him on
Riverside Drive, kept a car or two and enough servants to run his
menage smoothly, and serve a dinner exquisitely when he felt hospitably
inclined.

Could there be any doubt that Jimmie Dale was innately a gentleman?

It was evening, and Jimmie Dale sat at a small table in the corner of
the St. James Club dining room. Opposite him sat Herman Carruthers,
a young man of his own age, about twenty-six, a leading figure in the
newspaper world, whose rise from reporter to managing editor of the
morning NEWS-ARGUS within the short space of a few years had been almost
meteoric.

They were at coffee and cigars, and Jimmie Dale was leaning back in his
chair, his dark eyes fixed interestedly on his guest.

Carruthers, intently engaged in trimming his cigar ash on the edge of
the Limoges china saucer of his coffee set, looked up with an abrupt
laugh.

"No; I wouldn't care to go on record as being an advocate of crime," he
said whimsically; "that would never do. But I don't mind admitting quite
privately that it's been a positive regret to me that he has gone."

"Made too good 'copy' to lose, I suppose?" suggested Jimmie Dale