“No?” sneered Caleb, as a new and fainter murmur of deprecation ran along the table, “Maybe I’m not. I don’t get tanked up on cheap booze down in the bar after golf tournaments, like a lot of your ‘gentlemen’ here, an’ then wander up to dinner on the veranda an’ talk so loud that the women at the next table can’t hear themselves cackle. I don’t ask a party of men and women to dine with me here an’ then get a silly jag an’ sing ‘_Mother, Pin a Rose on Me_,’ every five minutes durin’ the meal till ev’rybody at the table gets scared for fear I’ll sing somethin’ worse,--like _you_ did last Sunday night.” Conover’s interlocutor sat down very hard and tried to look loftily indifferent. Caine’s undisguised laugh made the effort more difficult. “No,” pursued Caleb, with impersonal calm, “I’m not a gentleman. I used to think maybe I’d like to be one. But I don’t, any more. I come down here for dinner sometimes, Sunday evenin’. As there’s no one exactly clamorin’ to entertain me, I’ve plenty of chance to use my eyes an’ ears. So I get a line on ‘gentlemen’ an’ on how they act when they’re in their own crowd. At the table next to me last Sunday, there was a little dinner party. ’Bout a dozen in all. _You_ was givin’ it, I b’lieve, Mr. Featherstone. By the time dessert came everybody was a-tellin’ stories. Stories _I_ wouldn’t tell in a barroom. Women, too. Gee! I never knew before that women--” “Mr. Chairman!” cried Featherstone, jumping up. “I protest against this vile abuse. As a member of the Arareek--” “As a member of the Arareek,” cut in Caleb, “you’ll set down an’ be quiet. You’ve had your say. What I’ve just told, I’ve told as a member of the Club--an’ to fellow-members. Of course if I’m kicked out of the Arareek--an’ kicked out on _your_ vote, Featherstone--I won’t feel bound to keep my mouth shut about those same stories or who told ’em. Nor what you whispered to a girl as you passed my table on your way out. If--” “This is blackmail!” shrieked Featherstone, “I--” “It’s anything you like to name it,” agreed Caleb, cheerfully, “But it goes. Understand that. Anyone else got somethin’ to say?” “I should like to ask Mr. Conover,” put in another man, “if he can truthfully deny that his business dealings will not bear such inspection as--” “As your own deal in buyin’ the tip of where the new High School was to be built an’ then gettin’ an option on the land an’ squeezin’ the city for $48,000?” asked Conover. “Oh, I guess most of my business will frame up pretty well alongside of that. Say, your talk of ‘business methods’ makes me laugh, when I remember what you offered for that tip an’ who you went shares with on the money you got. As a feller Club member, my mouth’s shut on that. When I’m kicked out, it’ll be a diff’rent story. That’s blackmail again, if you like.” A nervous, gray-haired man at the foot of the board checked comment by saying: