“Fancy old Drene playing about with that girl on a strictly pious basis! He’s doubtless dub enough to waste his time. But what’s in it for her?” “Perhaps a little unaccustomed masculine decency.” “Everybody is decent enough to her as far as I know.” “Including yourself?” “Certainly, including myself,” retorted Quair, adding naively: “Besides, I knew any attempt at philandering would be time wasted.” “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?” “Because we went to his studio,” said Guilder. “Now about letting the contracts--” “Were you at Drene’s studio?”