Opening of the book
The Grand Duke’s Rubies1
There is in New York a club called the Balmoral, which has two peculiarities —no one ever goes there much before midnight, and it is the only place in town where you can get anything fit to eat at four o’clock in the morning. The members are politicians of the higher grade, men about town, and a sprinkle of nondescripts. In the unhallowed inspiration of a moment, Alphabet Jones, the novelist —in polite society Mr. A. B. Fenwick Chisholm-Jones —baptized it the
Smallpox, a name which has stuck tenaciously, the before-mentioned members being usually pitted —against each other. Of the many rooms of the club, one, it should be explained, is the most enticing. It is situated on an upper floor, and the siren that presides therein is a long table dressed in green. Her name is Baccarat.
One night last February, Alphabet Jones rattled up to the door in a vagabond hansom. He was thirsty, impecunious, and a trifle tired.
He had been to a cotillon, where he had partaken of champagne, and he wanted to get the taste of it out of his throat. He needed five hundred dollars, and in his card-case there were only two hundred and fifty. The bar of the Athenaeum Club he knew at that hour was closed, possible moneylenders were in bed, and it was with the idea of killing the two birds of the legend that he sought the Balmoral.
He encountered there no difficulty in slaking his thirst; and when, in one draught, which brought to his tonsils a suggestion of art, science, and Wagner combined, he swallowed a brandy-and-soda, he felt better, and looked about to see who might be present. The room which he had entered was on what is called the parlor floor. It was long, high-ceiled, comfortably furnished, and somewhat dim. At the furthermost end three men were seated, two of whom he recognized, the one as Sumpter Leigh, the other as Colonel Barker; but the third he did not remember to have seen before. Some Westerner, he thought; for Jones prided himself on knowing everyone worth knowing in New York, and, it may be added, in several other cities
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