“I paid the score, and we went out.  Near the door Kearny’s elbow overturned an upright glass showcase, smashing it into little bits.  I paid the storekeeper the price he asked.

“‘Come to my hotel for the night,’ I said to Kearny.  ’We sail to-morrow at noon.’

“He agreed; but on the sidewalk he fell to cursing again in the dull monotonous way that he had done when I pulled him out of the coal cellar.

“‘Captain,’ said he, ’before we go any further, it’s no more than fair to tell you that I’m known from Baffin’s Bay to Terra del Fuego as “Bad-Luck” Kearny.  And I’m It.  Everything I get into goes up in the air except a balloon.  Every bet I ever made I lost except when I coppered it.  Every boat I ever sailed on sank except the submarines.  Everything I was ever interested in went to pieces except a patent bombshell that I invented.  Everything I ever took hold of and tried to run I ran into the ground except when I tried to plough.  And that’s why they call me Bad-Luck Kearny.  I thought I’d tell you.’

“‘Bad luck,’ said I, ’or what goes by that name, may now and then tangle the affairs of any man.  But if it persists beyond the estimate of what we may call the “averages” there must be a cause for it.’

“‘There is,’ said Kearny emphatically, ’and when we walk another square I will show it to you.’

“Surprised, I kept by his side until we came to Canal Street and out into the middle of its great width.

“Kearny seized me by an arm and pointed a tragic forefinger at a rather brilliant star that shone steadily about thirty degrees above the horizon.

“‘That’s Saturn,’ said he, ’the star that presides over bad luck and evil and disappointment and nothing doing and trouble.  I was born under that star.  Every move I make, up bobs Saturn and blocks it.  He’s the hoodoo planet of the heavens.  They say he’s 73,000 miles in diameter and no solider of body than split-pea soup, and he’s got as many disreputable and malignant rings as Chicago.  Now, what kind of a star is that to be born under?’

“I asked Kearny where he had obtained all this astonishing knowledge.

“‘From Azrath, the great astrologer of Cleveland, Ohio,’ said he.  ’That man looked at a glass ball and told me my name before I’d taken a chair.  He prophesied the date of my birth and death before I’d said a word.  And then he cast my horoscope, and the sidereal system socked me in the solar plexus.  It was bad luck for Francis Kearny from A to Izard and for his friends that were implicated with him.  For that I gave up ten dollars.  This Azrath was sorry, but he respected his profession too much to read the heavens wrong for any man.  It was night time, and he took me out on a balcony and gave me a free view of the sky.  And he showed me which Saturn was, and how to find it in different balconies and longitudes.

“’But Saturn wasn’t all.  He was only the man higher up.  He furnishes so much bad luck that they allow him a gang of deputy sparklers to help hand it out.  They’re circulating and revolving and hanging around the main supply all the time, each one throwing the hoodoo on his own particular district.