The Hotel Lasande deserves a word or two. In the strict sense it is no hotel at all, being merely a twenty-story pile of four and five—and even seven and eight—room bachelor suites of the very highest class. Moving into the Lasande and assuming one of its breath-stopping leases is a process not unlike breaking into the most exclusive sort of club. One is investigated, which tells it all. The Lasande, catering to the very best and most opulent of the bachelor class, has nothing else beneath its roof.

Silent men servants, functioning perfectly despite their apparent woodenness, flit everywhere, invisible until needed, disappearing instantly when the task of the moment is done. There are dining-rooms for the few who do not dine in the privacy of their own apartments, and there is a long, comfortable lobby where, under the eagle eye of the clerk in the corner, only tenants or guests of tenants may lounge.

Into this latter area came Anthony Fry and Johnson Boller and the boy, and as the peculiarly intelligent eyes of the latter darted about it seemed to Mr. Boller that their twinkle turned to a positive glitter.

It was absurd enough, it hailed doubtless from the nervous loneliness within himself, yet Johnson Boller felt that the youngster was a downright evil force, swaggering along there, tremendously conscious of his own importance! He should have been sedate and subdued, to put it mildly, yet he grinned at the impeccable night clerk from under his cap and sent his impudent eyes roving on, to alight finally on the big chair near the north elevator.

"Who's the party with the big specs and why the prolonged stare?" the youngster asked irreverently.

"Eh? Oh, that's Mr. Hitchin, a neighbor of mine," Anthony smiled.

"He's an amateur detective, kid," Johnson Boller added significantly. "He knows every young crook in town. He's coming here to give you the once over."

"I should worry," murmured the self-possessed young man.

"Johnson, don't be idiotic," Anthony said, as he laid a hand on the boy's arm. "I'll have to introduce you. What's your name, my lad?"

"Eh?" asked the unusual boy, staring hard at Anthony.

"Your name! What is it?"

"Well—er—Prentiss," the youth admitted.

"Is that your first name or your last name?"

"That's just my last name," the boy smiled. "First name's David."

"David Prentiss, eh?" Anthony murmured with some satisfaction, for it had a substantial sound. "Well, David—er, Hitchin, how are you? Mr. Hitchin, my young friend, Mr. David Prentiss."

The boy's hand went out and gripped Hitchin's heartily enough. Mr. Hitchin held it for a moment and peered at David—and one saw what a really penetrating stare he owned.

It bored, as a point of tempered ice, wordlessly accusing one of murder, counterfeiting, bank burglary and plain second-story work. Frequently deep students of the higher detective fiction grow this stare, and Hobart Hitchin was one of the deepest. But now, having pierced David in a dozen places without finding bomb or knife, the stare turned to Anthony and grew quite normal and amiable.

"Prentiss, eh?" said Hitchin. "Not the Vermont branch?"

"New York," David supplied.

"Mr. Prentiss is staying with me for a little," Anthony smiled as they moved toward the elevator again.

"Staying with you, eh?" Hitchin repeated, with a careful survey of David's well-worn storm-coat; and added, with characteristic bluntness: "Working for you, Fry?"

"My guest," Anthony said annoyedly; and then the car came down and the door opened and they left Mr. Hitchin, but the boy cocked an eye at Anthony and asked flatly:

"What was the idea of that—staying with you? I'm not staying with you."

"You may decide to stay for a little."

"Not me," said David.

"We shall see," Anthony chuckled. "This is our floor."

Wilkins—the priceless, faultless Wilkins who had been with Anthony for sixteen years—opened the door and, even though he were Wilkins, started a trifle at the sight of David and his cap. He flushed for the start, to be sure, as his master moved into the big living-room with his superb dignity, but when he had taken cap and coat and examined the suit beneath, Wilkins shook his head mentally. One shock had come that evening in the knowledge that Johnson Boller, whom Wilkins did not approve, was to be with them—but this young ruffian!

"Make yourself at home, David," Anthony smiled. "We'll shed our coats and find our smoking jackets."

Johnson Boller with him, he moved to the corner bedroom, to face his old friend with:

"Well, what do you think of him?"

"He's a bad egg," Johnson Boller said readily. "I don't like his eye and the way he swaggers would get him six months in any court in town. Say whatever it is the devilish impulse prompts you to say and then fire him before he pinches the silver."

"Bosh!" Anthony said testily. "The boy's awed and self-conscious—the swagger is assumed to cover that, of course. I mean what, in your decidedly inferior judgment, is his fitness as a subject for experiment? Will he know opportunity when she is first set before him or will it be necessary to present her repeatedly?"

Johnson Boller laughed harshly and stared hard at his old friend. Under certain conditions, even the empty apartment on Riverside Drive might not be so bad.

"Say!" he demanded. "Are you going to keep that little rat here and argue with him till he admits that he recognizes whatever opportunity you're going to thrust at him?"

"Essentially that."

"Well, if it's an opportunity to earn an honest living, he'll never see it—and if the chatter takes more than an hour I'm going home!" Johnson Boller snapped. "I'd have stayed there if I'd known you were going off into the abstract, Anthony. I wanted to talk to you and have a little game of chess and a bottle of ale and——"

Anthony smiled serenely.

"And the mere fact that a train of thought, only slightly unusual, has entered your evening, has upset your whole being, hasn't it? Well, it'll do you good to hear and watch something different. This boy will see opportunity before I'm done with him, Johnson, and the longer it takes the sounder my general hypothesis will have been proven."

Curiously enough, David had lost much of his grinning assurance when they rejoined him. The impudence had left his eye and the boy seemed downright uneasy. He started and rose at the sight of them, and his quick, nervous smile lingered only a moment as he said:

"I think I'd better be going after all, Mr. Fry. It's pretty late and——"

"Just a minute or two, and perhaps you'll change your mind," Anthony said quietly, as he dropped into his pet chair. "You'll permit a personal question or two, David?"

"I suppose so."

"Then—how old are you?"

"Twenty."

"Ah! Parents living?"

David nodded.

"And in rather humble circumstances, perhaps?"

This time David glanced at him keenly, queerly, for an instant—opened his lips and shut them again and ended with a mere jerk of a nod.

"How about schooling, David? You've been through high school?"

"Er—yes."

"And have you a profession?" Anthony pursued.

"No, I haven't any profession?" the boy muttered.

"But you're working, of course?" Mr. Fry asked sharply.

"What? Oh, yes," said David.

"At some mechanical line?"

"Oh, yes," David said.

"In just what line, then?"

And now, had Anthony but been watching, some of Johnson Boller's suspicions must have seemed justified. There was no question about the way David's very intelligent eyes were acting now; they darted furtively, wildly almost, from side to side, as if the boy were seeking escape. They darted toward Anthony and away from him and back to David's shabby suit and worn shoes.

"I'm a—plumber's helper!" the boy said gustily.

"Wait a second, kid!" Mr. Boller put in. "Let me see those hands!"

"Well, they—they haven't had time to get roughened up yet!" David said quickly. "I just went to work yesterday."

"The boy's lying, Anthony!" Mr. Boller said bluntly.

"I don't lie, Mr.——"

"Boller," Anthony supplied. "And please don't badger the boy, Johnson."

"I'm not badgering him," said Johnson Boller; "only that kid's hands look more like a society queen's than an honest workingman's."

"They may be hands designed for better things. David! Tell me, are you quite satisfied to be a plumber's helper, or was it the only thing you could find in the way of employment?"

"It was all I could find," David muttered, glancing at the door. And then, with his quick smile, he rose again. "I'd like to sit here and answer questions, Mr. Fry, but I'll have to run along and——"

Anthony beamed at him over his glasses, fidgeting there with the impatience of youth, standing on one foot and then on the other. Anthony turned and beamed at the bookcase beside him, and selecting a volume, beamed at that, too.

"David," said he, "will you be seated long enough to hear a little poem?"

"What?"

"It is a very short poem, and one of my favorites," Anthony mused, and his stare at David grew quite hypnotic. "Ah, here it is—a little, wonderfully big poem by the late Senator John Ingalls. It is called—'Opportunity.'"

"Aha!" David said rather stupidly.

"And now, listen," said Anthony, clearing his throat.

He paused and sent the hypnotic smile drilling into David.

"'Master of human destinies!'" he repeated. "That, in itself, means a very great deal, does it not?"

"I guess so," David muttered dazedly, and, however briefly, Johnson Boller almost liked him for the look he directed at Anthony's bowed head.

"Once," concluded Anthony, "at every gate. Once, David!"

"Yes, I've heard that poem before," said David, who was examining the rug.

Johnson Boller laughed in a rich undertone. Anthony flushed, and his voice rose a little as he continued:

The owner of Fry's Imperial Liniment looked over his glasses and discovered that David, having poked open the door of the little-used cellarette with his foot, was looking in at the bottles with mild interest.

"'Every foe save death!'" Anthony rapped out. "Did you hear that, David?"

"Yes, of course," David said hastily. "Do you know what time it is, Mr. Fry?"

"No! Hear the rest!" said Anthony.

Almost reverently the book closed.

"Have you quite assimilated the full meaning of that little poem, David?" he asked gravely.

"Er—yes."

"Quite?" Anthony persisted.

"Why, I guess so," David said, eyes opening again. "Yes, I know I have—only don't look at me like that and——"

"Then hear the rest of what I have to say," Anthony went on quickly and impressively, "for now we come to my reason for bringing you here. David, you are poor. You are without a profession—without a business of your own. Your brightest hope at present is to become a plumber."

"Say——" David began.

"I should have said, your brightest chance," Anthony corrected. "But your ambition, David, is altogether different. Your ambition is to become—what?"

And now, before the penetrating, hypnotic eye, David seemed, not without warrant, to have grown downright frightened. He glanced swiftly at Anthony and at the door.

"I don't know," he said breathlessly. "What's the answer?"

"Well, what do you want to become? A doctor? A lawyer? A teacher? An electrician? A journalist? A clergyman? A painter? An architect? A mining engineer? A civil engineer? A——"

It was plain to Johnson Boller that the situation was getting beyond David's doubtless nimble, doubtless criminal, mind. The boy held up an unsteady hand and stayed the flow.

"That's it!" he said hoarsely. "A civil engineer! You got it out of me, didn't you? And now I'd better go and——"

His quick, scared grin showed all his teeth, and he nodded in the most ridiculous fashion—really much in the fashion one might nod at a hopeless lunatic when agreeing that, as a matter of course, he is the original Pharaoh. His mental state fairly glowed from him; all that David wanted was to leave the Hotel Lasande.

David, in short, was doing just what ninety-nine per cent. of the human race insists on doing; even at the hint of opportunity, he was trying to face about and escape. But more than that, David, obviously one of the lower classes, was treating Anthony Fry with a tolerance that was more than mere disrespect. He was causing Johnson Boller to chuckle wearily over his cigar—and in spite of his purely abstract interest, Anthony's color grew darker and his voice decidedly sharper.

"Sit still," he commanded, "and listen to me. David, up to this evening you had no real hope of attaining your ambition. In fine, opportunity to make the goal was not yours. Now opportunity is yours!"

"Is it?" David said throatily, albeit he did not resume his seat.

"Because this is what I mean to do for you, David; I mean to take you out of your present humble situation and educate you. I mean to have you here to live with me."

"What?" David gasped.

"From this very evening!" Anthony said firmly, and also astonishingly. "I shall outfit you properly and supply you with what money you need. I shall have you prepared for the best engineering college we can find, and entered there for the most complete engineering course. If you are helping in the support of your family, I shall pay to them a sum equivalent to your wages each month—or perhaps a little more, if it be essential to removing all anxiety from your mind. You follow me?"

David merely clutched the edge of his coat and gulped, staring fascinatedly at Anthony.

"I am reasonably wealthy, and I shall bear every expense that you may incur, David. When you have graduated, and everything that can be taught you has been taught you, I shall establish you in proper offices and use my considerable personal influence to see that you are supplied with work, and again until you are self-supporting I shall bear all the expense. In short, David," Anthony concluded, "I am holding opportunity before you—opportunity to do, without trouble or worry or delay, the thing you most desire. Well?"

Even Johnson Boller was mildly interested, although only mildly, and with a deprecatory smile on his lips. He knew exactly what the boy would do, of course, but it had no connection with Anthony's crack-brained notion.

David would grab with both hands at this kind of opportunity and settle down to a life of ease, and the chances were that he'd get Anthony to sign something that would cost him thousands when he had waked up and lost interest in the opportunity proposition.

To Johnson's sleepy and suspicious eye David looked like a crafty little devil, if one ever walked.

Yet after a silent thirty seconds opportunity, in her gaudiest and most conspicuous form, had made no visible impression on David Prentiss. His bewildered eyes roved from Anthony to Johnson Boller. Once he seemed about to laugh; again he seemed about to speak; he did neither.

And the clock struck twelve.

And had a bomb exploded between his poorly shod feet, the effect on David Prentiss could hardly have been more striking. He started, and his eyes, dilating, lost their bewilderment and showed plain, overwhelming horror. His mouth opened with a shout of:

"Was that midnight?"

"Very likely," Anthony said impatiently. "But as to——"

"Where's my cap and coat?" David demanded.

"Never mind your cap and coat. I——"

"But I do mind 'em!" David cried. "I've got to have them—quick! Where are they? Where's the man who took them?"

Anthony merely smiled with waxing curiosity.

"So you are really rejecting opportunity at the first knock, eh?" he mused.

And now David stilled his rising excitement only with a huge effort. He gripped his chair and looked Anthony in the eye.

"Opportunity be—hanged!" he cried shrilly. "Give me my cap and coat! I want to go home!"