High Noon

e finished the breezy article when, with an all pervading blast of a sweet-toned, but unnecessarily loud Gabriel horn, a big green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged, like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a bright green coat--a heavy man with a fat, colourless face and puffy eyes, and Paul, glancing up at the ostentatious approach, recognized in him a nouveau riche whom a political friend had insisted on introducing in London a few days before.

Schwartzberger, his name was (Paul had a peculiar trick of remembering names)--the fellow was said to have made a fortune in old rags--no, it was tinned meats--in Chicago. It was his proud boast that he started in the business as a butcher's errand boy but a few years ago, and now, no supper bill at the Moulin Rouge, no evening's play at Monte Carlo, had ever made a mat