"
"I must ask you to pardon me," continued Van Sweller, gracefully, "for
annoying you with questions, but some of your methods are a little new
to me. Shall I don a full-dress suit with an immaculate white tie--or
is there another tradition to be upset?"
"You will wear," I replied, "evening dress, such as a gentleman wears.
If it is full, your tailor should be responsible for its bagginess.
And I will leave it to whatever erudition you are supposed to possess
whether a white tie is rendered any whiter by being immaculate. And I
will leave it to the consciences of you and your man whether a tie that
is not white, and therefore not immaculate, could possibly form any
part of a gentleman's evening dress. If not, then the perfect tie is
included and understood in the term 'dress,' and its expressed addition
predicates either a redundancy of speech or the spectacle of a man
wearing two ties at once."
With this mild but deserved rebuke I left Van Sweller in his
dressing-room, and waited for him in his library.
About an hour later his valet came out, and I heard him telephone for
an electric cab.
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