Frank! Only, if you were going to invite a stranger—someone you had never met before—to dinner—why the hell couldn’t you have told him who you are and the purpose of the meeting?”
“I should think the purpose of the meeting was self-evident,” said Starwick calmly. “The purpose was to have dinner together. Does that demand a whole volume of explanation? No,” he said coldly, “I confess I see nothing extraordinary about that at all.”
“Of course there wasn’t!” the other youth exclaimed with vehement excitement. “Of course there was nothing extraordinary about it! Why, then, did you attempt, Frank, to make something extraordinary out of it?”
“It seems to me that you’re the one who’s doing that!” Starwick answered.
“Yes, but, damn it, man,” the other cried angrily “—don’t you see the point? You’re that way with everything you do! You try to surround the simplest act with this great air of mystery and secrecy,” he said bitterly. “Inviting me to dinner was all right—it was fine!” he shouted. “I was a green kid of twenty who knew no one here, and I was scared to death. It was wonderful to get an invitation from someone asking me to dinner. But when you sent the invitation, why couldn’t you have added just a word or two by way of explanation? Why couldn’t you have stated one or two simple facts that would have made the reason for your invitation clear?”
“For example?” Starwick said.
“Why, Frank, simply that you were Professor Hatcher’s assistant in the course, and that this thing of inviting people out to dinner was just a way you and Professor Hatcher had of getting acquainted with the new people,” the other youth said angrily. “After all, you can’t get an invitation to dinner from someone you don’t know without wondering what it’s all about.”
“And yet you came,” said Starwick.
“Yes, of course I came! I think I would have come if I had never heard of you before—I was so bewildered and rattled by this new life, and so overwhelmed by living in a big city for the first time in my life that I would have accepted any kind of invitation—jumped at the chance of meeting anyone! However, I already knew who you were when your invitation came. I had heard that a man named Starwick was Hatcher’s assistant. I figured therefore that the invitation had something to do with your connection with
