"Speaking of your friend, the Rajah, as you call him," I asked, "and his making his friends pay his bills--does he ever pay back?" "Always, when he gets it." "Well, where _does_ he get it--cards?" It seemed to me now that I saw some comforting light ahead, dense as I am at times. "Cards! Not much--never played a game in his life. Not that kind of a man." "How, then?" I wanted the facts. There must be some way in which a man like Stirling could live, keep out of jail, and keep his friends--friends like Marny. "Same way. Just chucks around cheerfulness to everybody who wants it, and 'most everybody does. As to ready money, there's hardly one of his rich friends in the Street who hasn't a Jack Stirling account on his books. And they are always lucky, for what they buy for Jack Stirling is sure to go up. Got to be a superstition, really. I know one broker who sent him over three thousand dollars last fall--made it for him out of a rise in some coal stock. Wrote him a note and told him he still had two thousand dollars to his credit on his books, which he would hold as a stake to make another turn on next time he saw a sure thing in sight. I was with Jack when he opened the letter. What do you think he did? He pulled out his bureau drawer, found a slip of paper containing a list of his debts, sat down and wrote out a check for each one of his creditors and enclosed them in the most charming little notes with marginal sketches--some in water-color--which every man of them preserves now as souvenirs. I've got one framed in my studio--regular little Fortuny--and the check is framed in with it. Never cashed it and never will. The Rajah, I tell you, old man, is very punctilious about his debts, no matter how small they are. Gave me fifteen shillings last time I went to Cairo to pay some duffer that lived up a street back of Shepheard's, a red-faced Englishman who had helped Jack out of a hole the year before, and who would have pensioned the Rajah for life if he could have induced him to pass the rest of his years with him. And he only saw him for two days! That's the funny thing about Jack. He never forgets his creditors, and his creditors never forget him. I'll tell you about this old Cairo lobster--that's what he looked like--red and claw-y. "When I found him he was stretched in a chair trying to cool off; he didn't even have the decency to get on his feet. "'Who?' he snapped out. Just as if I had been a book agent. "'Mr. John Stirling of New York.' "'Owes _me_ fifteen shillings?' "'That's what he said, and here it is,' and I handed him the silver.