Between Friends
Page 14"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
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
"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
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?"