Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/14

 sient, delaying under one roof no longer than was unavoidable—happiest, indeed, with no more than the wide sky for his bed canopy, the soft stars for his night lamps.

Finally, for some months O'Rourke had been kicking the heels of him about the pavements of civilization, devoutly praying for a war of magnitude; but in answer to his prayers no war had been vouchsafed unto him.

The broad world drowsed, sluggish, at peace with its neighbors—save in a corner of Afghanistan, where the British Empire was hurling army corps after army corps at the devoted heads of an insignificant, bewildered tribe of hillmen who had presumed to call their souls their own—knowing no better.

But the tempest in that particular teapot had slight attractions for O'Rourke, sincere seeker after distraction and destruction that he was. He felt rather sorry for the hill tribe who at the same time were beginning to feel rather more than sorry for themselves, and to wish that they hadn't done so.

The Irishman, however, positively refused to fight with, if he did not care to fight against, England. So there was, in his own disconsolate phrasing, nothing doing at all, at all.

And now the concierge was insisting upon the payment of that overdue rent. Plainly, something must be contrived, and that with expedition.

O'Rourke swore, yawned, stretched widely. He removed his feet from the window sill, and arose.

"I'll do it," he said aloud. "Faith, 'tis like pulling teeth—but I'll do it. I despise the necessity. Conspuez the necessity! A bas the necessity!"

At the foot of the bed stood his sole personal property—a small, iron-bound trunk, aged and disreputable to the eye,