He sensed that there were hidden rooms and twisting passages; and of this much he was certain, that Old Jimmie was sly and saturnine.
Well, he would be on guard that Old Jimmie didn't put anything over on your obliging servant, Barney Palmer! This was the era of legal prohibition, but thus far Barney had not been severely discommoded by the action of the representatives of America's free institutions in Washington, for Barney knew his New York.

In an ex-saloon on Sixth Avenue, which nominally sold only the soft drinks permitted by the wise men of the Capital, Barney leaned at his ease upon the bar and remarked: "Give me some of the real stuff, Tim, and forget that eye-dropper the boss bought you last week." Barney had a drink of the real stuff, and then another drink, in the measuring of neither of which had an eye-dropper been involved.
After that, much heartened, he put two dollars upon the bar and went his way.

His course took the dapper Barney into three of the gayest restaurants in the Times Square section; and in these Barney paused long enough to speak to a few after-theater supper-parties.

For this was the hour when Barney paid his social calls; he was very strict with himself upon this point.

Barney was really by way of being a rising figure in this particular circle of New York society composed of people who had or believed they had an interest in the theater, of expensively gowned women the foreground of whose lives was most attractive, but whose background was perhaps wisely kept out of the picture, and of moneyed young men who gloried in the idea that they were living the life.