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Without delay I introduced her to the "holy" man, who stood with his hands crossed over his breast in his most pious attitude. "My daughter, you have, I believe, been sent to me by our mutual friend," he said. "You wish for something? Here it is," and he produced a small oblong cardboard box such as jewellers use for men's scarf-pins.
He passed on to ulsters and raincoats, divagated into the colorful realm of neckwear, debated scarf-pins and cuff-links, visualized patterned shirtings, and emerged to dream of composite sartorial grandeurs which, duly synthesized into a long list of hopeful entries, were duly filed away within the pages of 3 T 9901, the pocket ledger.
This article was headed "Beech's Folly"; and even when the error was detected, the roar of merriment retained its momentum and rolled: so that, to the hour of the first launch, the enterprise was commonly referred to as "Beech's Folly", and scarf-pins, ink-stands, etc., in the shape of the forts, were sold with that superscription: "Beech's Folly".
Here he received a cold-water douche, and after rubbing his white and muscular body with coarse towels and donning his white linen, he seated himself before the mirror and began to brush his short, curly beard and the thinning curls of his forehead. Everything used by him the linen, clothing, shoes, scarfs, scarf-pins, cuff-buttons, were of the very best quality, simple, tasteful and expensive.
Into these color-schemes he stuck a variety of scarf-pins none very valuable or rare, but each one distinct a miniature ivory skull, for instance, with little garnets for eyes, or tiny onyx dice with sixes on all sides.
He was wholly at a loss for a tenable theory till he thought of the frequency with which men are robbed of scarf-pins or similar trifles and then a sickening possibility possessed him. One of the commonest devices that a woman employs in such a petty theft is to faint on the breast of her victim.
The man was not richly dressed, was not decked out with watch-chains and scarf-pins and rings, nor had he a shape to hint that the possession of millions had led to self-indulgence.
He approved of my gun and would have spent whole days firing it into the sky or the tree-tops, or at the barn or at birds, or into an expansive random, to the general danger of the neighborhood, if I had let him. He had a taste for jewelry, especially for my scarf-pins.
The brilliancy of the place, the display of diamond rings, scarf-pins, ear-rings, and breast-pins, the big rolls of money that were brought into evidence when drinks were paid for, and the air of gaiety that pervaded the place, all completely dazzled and dazed me. I felt positively giddy, and it was several minutes before I was able to make any clear and definite observations.
"If he had only gone off with all my waistcoats and scarf-pins, I'd have liked it better," said Van Bibber, "than his leaving me cash for infernal dinner. Why, a servant like Walters is worth twenty-eight-dollar dinners twice a day." Young Van Bibber broke one of his rules of life one day and came down-town.
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