"
Quigg's title came through his mother. One of her ancestors was a
Margravine of Saxony. His father was a Tammany brave. On account of
the dilution of his heredity he found that he could neither become
a reigning potentate nor get a job in the City Hall. So he opened a
restaurant. He was a man full of thought and reading. The business gave
him a living, though he gave it little attention. One side of his house
bequeathed to him a poetic and romantic adventure. The other gave him
the restless spirit that made him seek adventure. By day he was Quigg,
the restaurateur. By night he was the Margrave--the Caliph--the Prince
of Bohemia--going about the city in search of the odd, the mysterious,
the inexplicable, the recondite.
One night at 9, at which hour the restaurant closed, Quigg set forth
upon his quest. There was a mingling of the foreign, the military and
the artistic in his appearance as he buttoned his coat high up under his
short-trimmed brown and gray beard and turned westward toward the more
central life conduits of the city. In his pocket he had stored an
assortment of cards, written upon, without which he never stirred out of
doors. Each of those cards was good at his own restaurant for its face
value.
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