It
was too late to go to bed, so they sat around the table, with their
chairs tipped back and their knees against its edge. The two club men
had thrown off their great-coats, and their wide shirt fronts and silk
facings shone grandly in the smoky light of the oil lamps and the red
glow from the grill in the corner. They talked about the life the
reporters led, and the Philistines asked foolish questions, which the
gentleman of the press answered without showing them how foolish they
were.
"And I suppose you have all sorts of curious adventures," said Van
Bibber, tentatively.
"Well, no, not what I would call adventures," said one of the
reporters. "I have never seen anything that could not be explained or
attributed directly to some known cause, such as crime or poverty or
drink. You may think at first that you have stumbled on something
strange and romantic, but it comes to nothing. You would suppose that
in a great city like this one would come across something that could
not be explained away something mysterious or out of the common, like
Stevenson's Suicide Club. But I have not found it so. Dickens once
told James Payn that the most curious thing he ever saw In his rambles
around London was a ragged man who stood crouching under the window of
a great house where the owner was giving a ball.
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