Chapter III

The Mates Meet


Kirk Winfield was an amiable, if rather weak, young man with whom life,
for twenty-five years, had dealt kindly. He had perfect health, an
income more than sufficient for his needs, a profession which
interested without monopolizing him, a thoroughly contented
disposition, and the happy knack of surrounding himself with friends.

That he had to contribute to the support of the majority of these
friends might have seemed a drawback to some men. Kirk did not object
to it in the least. He had enough money to meet their needs, and, being
a sociable person who enjoyed mixing with all sorts and conditions of
men, he found the Liberty Hall regime pleasant.

He liked to be a magnet, attracting New York's Bohemian population. If
he had his preferences among the impecunious crowd who used the studio
as a chapel of ease, strolling in when it pleased them, drinking his
whisky, smoking his cigarettes, borrowing his money, and, on occasion,
his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. He was fully as
pleasant to Percy Shanklyn, the elegant, perpetually resting English
actor, whom he disliked as far as he was capable of disliking any one,
as he was to Hank Jardine, the prospector, and Hank's prize-fighter
friend, Steve Dingle, both of whom he liked enormously.

It seemed to him sometimes that he had drifted into the absolutely