The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I have!--all sorts, all nations--from certain domestic and predatory statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress notorious in a decadent novel!--all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally I've just used my foot on another social favorite----" "Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged Wilton's pardon. "You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very much out of countenance. "It was rotten bad taste in me----" Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"--tapping the bundle under his arm--"your eye happened to catch that superscription; no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to--a rather embarrassing conclusion." Duane's serious face fell: "My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy. Are you going up to see him now?" Wilton hesitated: "I suppose I am.... See here, Duane, how much do you know about--anything?" "Nothing," he said without humour; "I'm beginning to worry over my father's health.... Guy, don't tell me anything that my father's son ought not to know; but is there something I should know and don't?--anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?" Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy. "I--don't--know," he said slowly. "I'm going to see your father now. If there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you. Don't you?" "Yes. But he won't. Guy, I don't care a damn about anything except his health and happiness. If anything threatens either, he won't tell me, but don't you think I ought to know?" "You ask too hard a question for me to answer." "Then can you answer me this? Is father at all involved in any of Jack Dysart's schemes?" "I--had better not answer, Duane." "You know best. You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs and yours." "Yes, I understand. Let me think over things for a day or two. Now I've got to hustle. Good-bye." He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and presently rattled off up-town. In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at a bronze grille. The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the tiny elevator.