Scarcely entrenched at Claridge's, the Millionaire telephoned derisively to the city, so that the Iron King returned home half an hour before his usual time, prepared to deal with the Poet as he dealt with querulous or inquisitive shareholders at General Meetings. The Poet, however, was long and painfully accustomed to combat with enraged editors and lost no time in assuming the offensive, demanding indignantly in a high head-voice, before the Iron King had crossed his own threshold, why no quarters had been found for him and how much longer any one imagined that he would put up with the indignity of being bandied from one wretched house to another. The flushed cheeks and hysterical manner put the Iron King temporarily out of countenance. "My dear fellow!" he interrupted ingratiatingly. "I'm not a business man," continued the Poet hotly. "You all of you told me that, and I'm disposed to say: 'Thank God, I'm not.'" The Iron King put his hat carefully out of reach and forced a smile. "You mustn't take it like that, old chap," he said soothingly. "I--we--all of us are doing our best. Now we won't bother about dressing; let's go straight in and thrash the thing out over a bottle of wine." Instructing his butler very audibly to open a bottle of the 1906 Lanson, he slipped his arm through the Poet's and led him, sullenly murmuring, into the dining-room. With the second bottle of champagne, his guest ceased to be aggrieved and became quarrelsome; when the port wine appeared, he had the Iron King cowed and broken in moral. "If you find fault with everything, why do you come here, why stay here?" complained the Iron King with a last flickering effort to recover his independence. "Why don't you find me some other place to go to, as you promised?" the Poet retorted, as he made his way to the morning-room and sat down to order a month's supply of underclothes from his hosier. III The Iron King always boasted that honesty was the best policy and that he was invariably willing to put his cards on the table. The Millionaire had once professed himself likely to be satisfied if the Iron King would only remove the fifth ace from his sleeve, and a certain coolness between the two men resulted. In general, however, he had the reputation of a frank, bluff fellow.