THE DAY OF DAYS

BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

THE DAY OF DAYS
THE DESTROYING ANGEL
THE BANDBOX
CYNTHIA-OF-THE-MINUTE
NO MAN'S LAND
THE FORTUNE HUNTER
THE POOL OF FLAME
THE BRONZE BELL
THE BLACK BAG
THE BRASS BOWL
THE PRIVATE WAR
TERENCE O'ROURKE

What I want to say is—will you be my guest at the theatre tonight?"

THE DAY OF DAYS

AN EXTRAVAGANZA

By

LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

Author of "The Brass Bowl," "The Black Bag," "The Bandbox," "
The Destroying Angel," Etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1913

Copyright, 1912, 1913,
By Louis Joseph Vance.

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.

Published, February, 1913
Reprinted, March, 1913

The University Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

• THE DUB
• INSPIRATION
• THE GLOVE COUNTER
• A LIKELY STORY
• THE COMIC SPIRIT
• SPRING TWILIGHT
• AFTERMATH
• WHEELS OF CHANCE
• THE PLUNGER
• UNDER FIRE
• BURGLARY UNDER ARMS
• THE LADY OF THE HOUSE
• RESPECTABILITY
• WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
• SUCH STUFF AS PLOTS ARE MADE OF
• BEELZEBUB
• IN A BALCONY
• THE BROOCH
• NEMESIS
• NOVEMBER
• THE SORTIE
• TOGETHER
• PERCEVAL UNASHAMED

ILLUSTRATIONS

"What I want to say is—will you be my guest at the theatre tonight?"

"You are the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots!"

Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.

He was Red November.

THE DAY OF DAYS

I

THE DUB

"Smell," P. Sybarite mused aloud....

For an instant he was silent in depression. Then with extraordinary vehemence he continued crescendo: "Stupid-stagnant-sepulchral- sempiternally-sticky-Smell!"

He paused for both breath and words—pondered with bended head, knitting his brows forbiddingly.

"Supremely squalid, sinisterly sebaceous, sombrely sociable Smell!" he pursued violently.

Momentarily his countenance cleared; but his smile was as fugitive as the favour of princes.

Vindictively champing the end of a cedar penholder, he groped for expression: "Stygian ... sickening ... surfeiting ... slovenly ... sour...."

He shook his head impatiently and clawed the impregnated atmosphere with a tragic hand.

"Stench!" he perorated in a voice tremulous with emotion.

Even that comprehensive monosyllable was far from satisfactory.

"Oh, what's the use?" P. Sybarite despaired.

Alliteration could no more; his mother-tongue itself seemed poverty-stricken, his native wit inadequate. With decent meekness he owned himself unfit for the task to which he had set himself.

"I'm only a dub," he groaned—"a poor, God-forsaken, prematurely aged and indigent dub!"

For ten interminable years the aspiration to do justice to the Genius of the Place had smouldered in his humble bosom; to-day for the first time he had attempted to formulate a meet apostrophe to that God of his Forlorn Destiny; and now he chewed the bitter cud of realisation that all his eloquence had proved hopelessly poor and lame and halting.

Perched on the polished seat of a very tall stool, his slender legs fraternising with its legs in apparently inextricable intimacy; sharp elbows digging into the nicked and ink-stained bed of a counting-house desk; chin some six inches above the pages of a huge leather-covered ledger, hair rumpled and fretful, mouth doleful,