THE BRASS BOWL

BY
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE


1907



I


DUST

In the dull hot dusk of a summer's day a green touring-car,
swinging out of the East Drive, pulled up smartly, trembling, at
the edge of the Fifty-ninth Street car-tracks, then more sedately,
under the dispassionate but watchful eye of a mounted member of
the Traffic Squad, lurched across the Plaza and merged itself in
the press of vehicles south-bound on the Avenue.

Its tonneau held four young men, all more or less disguised in
dust, dusters and goggles; forward, by the side of the grimy and
anxious-eyed mechanic, sat a fifth, in all visible respects the
counterpart of his companions. Beneath his mask, and by this I do
not mean his goggles, but the mask of modern manner which the
worldly wear, he was, and is, different.

He was Daniel Maitland, Esquire; for whom no further introduction