The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butler hurried out and helped him alight--not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if he were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said and groped his way into the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up to his floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring." "The doctor--" began Mallow. "Do as I tell you!" When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink that might have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerful than his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seated himself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared toward the image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing but spinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man's winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing." His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone--" The tears flooded his eyes--tears of pity for himself, an injured and abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he repeated. "Friends gone--" He laughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or I shouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends--a man gets what he can pay for. Grip gone--luck gone! What's the use?" He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the divan was a--a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew that it was vast, that it was scaly, with many short fat legs tipped with claws; that its color was green, that its purpose was hideous, gleaming in craft from large, square, green-yellow eyes. He wiped the sticky sweat from his brow. "It's only the brandy," he said loudly, and the Thing faded, vanished. He drew a deep breath of relief. He went to a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself by the handles of the second drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's in that drawer." He released the handles and staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ring for the doctor." In a moment he was up again, but instead of going toward the bell he went to the drawers and opened the second one. In a compartment lay a pearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away--the steel and the pearl were cold. He closed the drawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly, took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk and laid it there. His face was chalk-white in spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He rested his aching, burning, reeling head on his hands and stared at the revolver. "But," he said aloud, as if contemptuously dismissing a suggestion, "why should I shoot myself? I can smash 'em all--to powder--grind 'em into the dirt."