“Yas-suh; and wif the lobstuh, suh, Ah venture to sug-gest a nice cold lil ha’f-pint of Cliquot, Yallah Label?  How that strike yo’ fancy, suh?  Er mebbe yo’d perfuh—­”

“Enough!” said P. Sybarite firmly.  “A mere bite and a glass are enough to sustain life.”

“Ain’t that the troof?”

Chuckling, the negro waddled away, returned, and offered the guest a glass brimming with amber-tinted liquid.

Poising the vessel delicately between thumb and forefinger, P. Sybarite treated himself to one small sip—­an instant of lingering delectation—­another sip.  So only, it is asserted, must the victim of the desert begin to allay his burning thirst; with discretion—­a sip at a time—­gingerly.

It was years since P. Sybarite had tasted a cocktail artfully concocted.

Dreamily he closed his eyes halfway.  From a point in his anatomy a degree or two south of his diaphragm, a sensation of the most warm congratulation began to pervade his famished system:  as if (he thought) his domestic economy were organising a torchlight procession by way of appropriate celebration.

Tender morsels of lobster smothered in cream and sherry (piping hot) daintiest possible wafers of bread-and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow-stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another:  these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation.

Finally “the house,” through the medium of its servitor, insisted that he top off with a cigar.

Ten years since his teeth had gripped a Fancy Tales of Smoke!...

Now it mustn’t be understood that P. Sybarite entertained any misapprehensions as to the nature of the institution into which he had stumbled.  He had not needed the sound, sometimes in quieter moments audible from upstairs, of a prolonged whirr ending in several staccato clicks, to make him shrewdly cognisant of its questionable character.

So at length, satiate and a little weary—­drawn by curiosity besides—­he rose, endowed Pete lavishly with a handful of small change (something over fifty cents; all he had in the world aside from his cherished five dollars), and with an impressive air of the most thorough-paced sophistication (nodding genially to the doorkeeper en passant) slowly ascended to the second floor.

Here, in remodelling the house for its present purposes, partitions had arbitrarily been dispensed with, aside from that enclosing the well of the stairway; the floor was one large room, wholly devoted to some half a dozen games of chance.  With but few of these was P. Sybarite familiar; but on information and belief he marked down a faro layout, the device with which his reading had made him acquainted under the designation of les petits chevaux, and at either end of the saloon, immense roulette tables.