Joe slid the money back into his pocket.

“Not in mine,” he announced.  “No gettin’ oryide for me, though there ain’t nothin’ to stop me except I don’t want to.  I’ve ben drunk once since I seen you last, an’ then it was unexpected, bein’ on an empty stomach.  When I work like a beast, I drink like a beast.  When I live like a man, I drink like a man—­a jolt now an’ again when I feel like it, an’ that’s all.”

Martin arranged to meet him next day, and went on to the hotel.  He paused in the office to look up steamer sailings.  The Mariposa sailed for Tahiti in five days.

“Telephone over to-morrow and reserve a stateroom for me,” he told the clerk.  “No deck-stateroom, but down below, on the weather-side,—­the port-side, remember that, the port-side.  You’d better write it down.”

Once in his room he got into bed and slipped off to sleep as gently as a child.  The occurrences of the evening had made no impression on him.  His mind was dead to impressions.  The glow of warmth with which he met Joe had been most fleeting.  The succeeding minute he had been bothered by the ex-laundryman’s presence and by the compulsion of conversation.  That in five more days he sailed for his loved South Seas meant nothing to him.  So he closed his eyes and slept normally and comfortably for eight uninterrupted hours.  He was not restless.  He did not change his position, nor did he dream.  Sleep had become to him oblivion, and each day that he awoke, he awoke with regret.  Life worried and bored him, and time was a vexation.

CHAPTER XLVI

“Say, Joe,” was his greeting to his old-time working-mate next morning, “there’s a Frenchman out on Twenty-eighth Street.  He’s made a pot of money, and he’s going back to France.  It’s a dandy, well-appointed, small steam laundry.  There’s a start for you if you want to settle down.  Here, take this; buy some clothes with it and be at this man’s office by ten o’clock.  He looked up the laundry for me, and he’ll take you out and show you around.  If you like it, and think it is worth the price—­twelve thousand—­let me know and it is yours.  Now run along.  I’m busy.  I’ll see you later.”

“Now look here, Mart,” the other said slowly, with kindling anger, “I come here this mornin’ to see you.  Savve?  I didn’t come here to get no laundry.  I come a here for a talk for old friends’ sake, and you shove a laundry at me.  I tell you, what you can do.  You can take that laundry an’ go to hell.”

He was out of the room when Martin caught him and whirled him around.

“Now look here, Joe,” he said; “if you act that way, I’ll punch your head.  An for old friends’ sake I’ll punch it hard.  Savve?—­you will, will you?”

Joe had clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and writhing out of the advantage of the other’s hold.  They reeled about the room, locked in each other’s arms, and came down with a crash across the splintered wreckage of a wicker chair.  Joe was underneath, with arms spread out and held and with Martin’s knee on his chest.  He was panting and gasping for breath when Martin released him.