"Yet you tried it," mused Guilder, entering his big touring car and

depositing a bundle of blue-prints and linen tracing paper at his

own ponderous feet. Quair followed him and spoke briefly to the

chauffeur, then: "Tried nothing," he said. "A little chaff, that's all. When it

comes to a man like Jack Graylock going so far as to ask her to

marry him, good night, nurse! Nothing doing, even for me."

"Even for you," repeated Guilder in his moderate and always

modulated voice. "Well, if she's escaped you and Graylock, she's

beyond any danger from Drene, I fancy."

Quair smiled appreciatively, as though a delicate compliment had

been offered him. Several times on the way to call on Graylock he

insisted on stopping the car at as many celebrated cafes. Guilder

patiently awaited him in the car and each time Quair emerged from

the cafe bar a little more flushed and a trifle jauntier than when

he had entered.

He was a man so perfectly attired and so scrupulously fastidious

about his person that Guilder often speculated as to just why Quair

always seemed to him a trifle soiled.

Now, looking him over as he climbed into the car, unusually red in

the face, breathing out the aroma of spirits through his little,

pinched nostrils, a faint sensation of disgust came over the senior

member of the firm as though the junior member were physically

unclean.

"That's about ten drinks since luncheon," he remarked, as the car

rolled on down Fifth Avenue.

Quair, who usually grew disagreeably familiar when mellow, poked his

gloved thumb: "You're a merry old cock, aren't you?" he inquired genially, "--like

a pig's wrist! If I hadn't the drinking of the entire firm to do,

who'd ever talk about Guilder and Quair, architects?"

It was common rumor that Quair did his brilliant work only when

"soused." And he never appeared to be perfectly sober, even when he

was.

Graylock received them in his office--a big, reckless-eyed, handsome

man, with Broad Street written all over him and "danger" etched in

every deepened line of his face.

"Well, how about that business of mine?" he inquired. "It's all

right to keep me waiting, of course, while you and Quair here match

for highballs at the Ritz."

"I had to see Drene--that's why we are late," explained Guilder.

"We're ready to go ahead and let your contracts for you--"

"Drene?" interrupted Graylock, looking straight at Guilder with a

curious and staring intensity. "Why drag Drene into an excuse?"




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