The Last Asset

I

"THE devil!" Paul Garnett exclaimed as he re-read his note; and the
dry old gentleman who was at the moment his only neighbour in the
quiet restaurant they both frequented, remarked with a smile: "You
don't seem particularly annoyed at meeting him."

Garnett returned the smile. "I don't know why I apostrophized him,
for he's not in the least present--except inasmuch as he may prove
to be at the bottom of anything unexpected."

The old gentleman who, like Garnett, was an American, and spoke in
the thin rarefied voice which seems best fitted to emit sententious
truths, twisted his lean neck toward the younger man and cackled out
shrewdly: "Ah, it's generally a woman who is at the bottom of the
unexpected. Not," he added, leaning forward with deliberation to
select a tooth-pick, "that that precludes the devil's being there
too."

Garnett uttered the requisite laugh, and his neighbour, pushing back
his plate, called out with a perfectly unbending American
intonation: "Gassong! L'addition, silver play."

His repast, as usual, had been a simple one, and he left only thirty
centimes in the plate on which his account was presented; but the
waiter, to whom he was evidently a familiar presence, received the
tribute with Latin affability, and hovered helpfully about the table
while the old gentleman cut and lighted his cigar.

"Yes," the latter proceeded, revolving the cigar meditatively
between his thin lips, "they're generally both in the same hole,
like the owl and the prairie-dog in the natural history books of my
youth. I believe it was all a mistake about the owl and the
prairie-dog, but it isn't about the unexpected. The fact is, the
unexpected _is_ the devil--the sooner you find that out, the happier
you'll be." He leaned back, tilting his smooth bald head against the
blotched mirror behind him, and rambling on with gentle garrulity
while Garnett attacked his omelet.

"Get your life down to routine--eliminate surprises. Arrange things
so that, when you get up in the morning, you'll know exactly what is
going to happen to you during the day--and the next day and the
next. I don't say it's funny--it ain't. But it's better than being
hit on the head by a brick-bat. That's why I always take my meals at
this restaurant. I know just how much onion they put in things--if I
went to the next place I shouldn't. And I always take the same
streets to come here--I've been doing it for ten years now. I know
at which crossings to look out--I know what I'm going to see in the
shop-windows. It saves a lot of wear and tear to know what's coming.
For a good many years I never did know, from one minute to