Obsession

For the career of Mr. Eddie Brandes was capable of furnishing material
for interesting stories if carefully edited, and related with
discretion and circumspection. He had been many things to many
men--and to several women--he had been a tinhorn gambler in the
Southwest, a miner in Alaska, a saloon keeper in Wyoming, a fight
promoter in Arizona. He had travelled profitably on popular ocean
liners until requested to desist; Auteuil, Neuilly, Vincennes, and
Longchamps knew him as tout, bookie, and, when fitfully prosperous, as
a plunger. Epsom knew him once as a welcher; and knew him no more.

He had taken a comic opera company through the wheat-belt--one way; he
had led a burlesque troupe into Arizona and had traded it there for a
hotel.

"When Eddie wants to talk," Stull used to say, "that smoke,
Othello, hasn't got nothing on him."

However, Brandes seldom chose to talk. This was one of his rare
garrulous occasions; and, with careful self-censorship, he was making
an endless series of wonder-tales out of the episodes and faits
divers common to the experience of such as he.

So, of moving accidents by flood and field this man had a store, and
he contrived to make them artistically innocuous and perfectly fit for
family consumption.

Further, two of his friends motored over from Saratoga to see him,
were brought to supper at the Carews'; and they gave him a clean bill
of moral health. They were, respectively, "Doc" Curfoot--suave haunter
of Peacock Alley and gentleman "capper"--whom Brandes introduced as
the celebrated specialist, Doctor Elbert Curfoot--and Captain Harman
Quint, partner in "Quint's" celebrated temple of chance--introduced as
the distinguished navigating officer which he appeared to be. The
steering for their common craft, however, was the duty of the eminent
Doc.