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"Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life," he interrupted. "I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear."

So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavored conversation in his halls.

"I'll tell you God's truth." His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by.

"I am the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west-all dead now.

I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years.

It is a family tradition."

He looked at me sideways-and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying.

He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or swallowed it or choked on it as though it had bothered him before.

And with this doubt his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him after all.

"What part of the middle-west?" I inquired casually.

"San Francisco."

"I see."

"My family all died and I came into a good deal of money."

His voice was solemn as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg but a glance at him convinced me otherwise.

"After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe-Paris, Venice, Rome-collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago."

With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned "character" leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.

"Then came the war, old sport.

It was a great relief and I tried very hard to die but I seemed to bear an enchanted life.

I accepted a commission as first lieutenant when it began.

In the Argonne Forest I took two machine-gun detachments so far forward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn't advance.

We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead.

I was promoted to be a major and every Allied government gave me a decoration-even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!"

Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them-with his smile.

The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people.

It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm little heart.

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