Warry Raridan's days were not all lucky. He had been keeping his office with great fidelity of late. He had even found a client or two; and he had determined to rebuke his critics by giving proof of his possession of those staying qualities which they were always denying him. He had been hard at work in his office this afternoon, when a note came to him from Mabel, who begged that he would drive with her to the Country Club. He had already thought of telephoning to Evelyn to ask her if she would not go with him, but had dropped the idea when he remembered his new resolutions; it was for Evelyn that he was at work now. But Mabel was a friendly soul, and perfectly harmless. It certainly looked very pleasant outside; the next citation in the authorities he was consulting,--Sweetbriar _vs._ O'Neill, 84 N. Y., 26,--would lead him over to the law library, which was a gloomy hole with wretched ventilation. So he had given himself a vacation, with the best grace and excuse in the world. CHAPTER XVII WARRY'S REPENTANCE Saxton dined alone at the Clarkson Club, as he usually did, and went afterward to his office, which he still maintained in the Clarkson National Building. He had been studying the report of an engineering expert on a Colorado irrigation scheme and he was trying to master and correct its weaknesses. As he hung over the blue-prints and the pages of figures that lay before him, the flashing red wheels of Mabel Margrave's trap kept interfering; he wished Warry had not turned up just as he had. He thought he understood why his friend had been so occupied in his office of late; but whether Warry and Evelyn Porter were engaged or not, Warry ought to find better use for his talents than in amusing Mabel Margrave. John lighted his pipe to help with the blue-prints, and while he drew it into cozy accord with himself, the elevator outside discharged a passenger; he heard the click of the wire door as the cage receded, followed by Raridan's quick step in the hall, and Warry broke in on him. "Well, you're the limit! I'd like to know what you mean by roosting up here and not staying in your room where a white man can find you." He stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his top-coat, and glared at Saxton, who lay back in his chair and bit his pipe. "I wish by all the gods I could rattle you once and shake you out of your damned Harvard aplomb!" Raridan did not usually invoke the gods, and he rarely damned anything or anybody. "That's a very pretty coat you have on, Mr. Raridan. It must be nice to be a plutocrat and wear clothes like that." "The beastly thing doesn't fit," growled Raridan, throwing himself into a chair. "I don't fit, and my clothes don't fit, and--" "And you're having a fit. You'd better see a nerve specialist." Warry was pounding a cigarette on the back of his case. "I say, Saxton," he said calmly.