In the afternoon there was more riding, and walks in the crisp November air; and indoors, bridge and rackets and ping-pong, and a fast and furious game of roulette, with the host as banker.  “Do I look much like a professional gambler?” he asked of Montague; and when the other replied that he had not yet met any New York gamblers, young Harvey went on to tell how he had gone to buy this apparatus (the sale of which was forbidden by law) and had been asked by the dealer how “strong” he wanted it!

Then in the evening there was more dancing, and on Sunday another hunt.  That night a gambling mood seemed to seize the company—­there were two bridge tables, and in another room the most reckless game of poker that Montague had ever sat in.  It broke up at three in the morning, and one of the company wrote him a cheque for sixty-five hundred dollars; but even that could not entirely smooth his conscience, nor reconcile him to the fever that was in his blood.

Most important to him, however, was the fact that during the game he at last got to know Charlie Carter.  Charlie did not play, for the reason that he was drunk, and one of the company told him so and refused to play with him; which left poor Charlie nothing to do but get drunker.  This he did, and came and hung over the shoulders of the players, and told the company all about himself.

Montague was prepared to allow for the “wild oats” of a youngster with unlimited money, but never in his life had he heard or dreamed of anything like this boy.  For half an hour he wandered about the table, and poured out a steady stream of obscenities; his mind was like a swamp, in which dwelt loathsome and hideous serpents which came to the surface at night and showed their flat heads and their slimy coils.  In the heavens above or the earth beneath there was nothing sacred to him; there was nothing too revolting to be spewed out.  And the company accepted the performance as an old story—­the men would laugh, and push the boy away, and say, “Oh, Charlie, go to the devil!”

After it was all over, Montague took one of the company aside and asked him what it meant; to which the man replied:  “Good God!  Do you mean that nobody has told you about Charlie Carter?”

It appeared that Charlie was one of the “gilded youths” of the Tenderloin, whose exploits had been celebrated in the papers.  And after the attendants had bundled him off to bed, several of the men gathered about the fire and sipped hot punch, and rehearsed for Montague’s benefit some of his leading exploits.

Charlie was only twenty-three, it seemed; and when he was ten his father had died and left eight or ten millions in trust for him, in the care of a poor, foolish aunt whom he twisted about his ringer.  At the age of twelve he was a cigarette fiend, and had the run of the wine-cellar.  When he went to a rich private school he took whole trunks full of cigarettes with him, and finally ran away to Europe,