I became his friend. We talked German together. His one desire, he confided to me, was to marry a rich woman, and once he clumsily proposed to arrange a rich marriage for myself if I would give him a--commission on results!
His personality is worth this brief description, perhaps, since it sheds light, incidentally, upon the world I lived in. Always most carefully dressed, he occupied a single room in a well-appointed house in East 22nd Street, talking airily of a bedroom on the floor above, of a bathroom I was sure he never used, and complaining apologetically of "this awful house I'm in for the moment." His pose was that of an aristocrat, proud and resigned among untoward circumstances, and it was through no mistake of his own that this humbug did not impose on me. I just knew it was all bunkum. His actual business, I felt sure, was unsavoury, though Brodie, having once discovered artificial flowers in his coat pocket, thought he was a floor-walker in some big store. Various suspicious details confirmed me later in the belief that his real occupation was blackmailing.
In his single room, at any rate, where a piece of furniture against the wall covered with framed photographs of German notabilities was in reality a folding-bed--I never once, since the oysters, betrayed that I knew this--he lived "like a gentleman." Every night, from nine o'clock onwards, he was "at home"; a box of cigars, various liqueurs, he offered without fail, and "with an air" if you please, although the former never held more than three or four cigars, the bottles never more than enough to fill two glasses, because "my servant, confound him, has forgotten again to fill them." He had no servant, of course, and the minimum of replenishing was done by himself every evening before nine o'clock. "Then you are a Baron really?" I said once, referring to the "von" before his name. He looked at me with the disdainful smile a prince in difficulties might have worn: "In this city of snobs and scoundrels," he said lightly, "I have
dropped my title. The 'von' alone I find more dignified."
