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At four-ten he went into the dim little basement wine-room of Schoppenvoll.

Schoppenvoll paid no attention whatever to the interruption. He gave an exhibition of cork-pulling which a watchmaker might have envied for its delicacy; he poured the tall glasses half-full of the clear amber fluid and opened the bottles of Glanzen Wasser. The three friends, Schoppenvoll now sitting, clinked their steins solemnly and emptied them.

Schoppenvoll, a tall, straight-backed man with the dignity of a major, a waving gray pompadour, and a clean-cut face that might have belonged to a Beethoven, set down the tray at the very edge of the table and slid it gently into place. An overgrown fat boy, with his sleeves rolled to his shoulders, brought three shining glasses, three bottles of Glanzen Wasser and a corkscrew.

When you die we shall have no more good walking clothes for our womenfolks." "And when Schoppenvoll dies we have no more good wine," declared Ersten with conviction and a wave of his hand as Schoppenvoll approached them with an inordinately long-necked bottle, balancing it carefully on its side. Johnny had drawn near the table now, but no one saw him, for this moment was one of deep gravity.

As he went out, Ersten and Kurzerhosen and Schoppenvoll, in blissful forgetfulness of him, raised their glasses for the first delicious sip of the Rheinthranen, of which there were only two hundred and eighty precious bottles left in the world. Outside, Johnny hailed a passing taxi. He called on Morton Washer, on Ben Courtney, on Colonel Bouncer, and even on Candy-King Slosher; but to no purpose.

While Schnitt thanked Johnny for his interference until that modest young man blushed, Ersten argued seriously in whispers with Shoppenvoll to secure a bottle of the precious wine that only he and Schoppenvoll and Kurzerhosen had a right to purchase. Johnny drank his with dull wonder. It tasted just like Rhine wine!