"Come up to my room and smoke. I've better whiskey than we dispense down here. I'm living at the club, you know. They haven't yet got over my fiasco at home and I can't stand their joshing." Neither of the men noticed that a third man followed them, stumbling up the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at his ease: "If you fellows don't mind, I'll butt in a moment," he said. "How are you, Mallett? How are you?" giving Grandcourt an impertinent look; and added: "Do you, by any chance, expect your friend Dysart in here this afternoon?" "Dysart is no longer a member of this club," said Grandcourt quietly. "I've told you that a dozen times." "All right, I'll ask you two dozen times more, if I choose," retorted Quest. "Why not?" And he gave him an ugly stare. The man was just drunk enough to be quarrelsome. Duane paid him no further attention; Grandcourt asked him very civilly if he could do anything for him. "Sure," sneered Quest. "You can tell Dysart that if I ever come across him I'll shoot him on sight! Tell him that and be damned!" "I've already told him that," said Grandcourt with a shrug of contempt. The weak, vicious face of the other reddened: "What do you mean by taking that tone with me?" he demanded loudly. "Do you think I won't make good?" He fumbled around in his clothing for a moment and presently jerked a pistol free--one of the automatic kind with rubber butt and blued barrel. "Unless you are drunker than I've ever seen you," said Grandcourt, "you'll put up that pistol before I do." Quest cursed him steadily for a minute: "Do you think I haven't got the nerve to use it when m' honour's 'volved? I tell you," he said thickly, "when m' honour's 'volved----" "You get drunk, don't you?" observed Duane. "What a pitiful pup you are, anyway. Go to bed." Quest stood swaying slightly on his heels and considering Duane with the inquiring solemnity of one who is in process of grasping and digesting an abstruse proposition. "B-bed?" he repeated; "me?" "Certainly. A member of this club disgracefully drunk in the afternoon will certainly hear from the governing board unless he keeps out of sight until he's sane again." "Thank you," said Quest with owlish condescension; "I'm indebted to you for calling 'tention to m-matters which 'volve honour of m' own club and----" His voice rambled off into a mutter; he sat or rather fell into an armchair and lay there twitching and mumbling to himself and inspecting his automatic pistol with prominent watery eyes. "You'd better leave that squirt-gun with me," said Grandcourt. Quest refused with an oath, and, leaning forward and hammering the padded chair-arm with his unhealthy looking fist, he broke out into a violent arraignment of Dysart: