The bartender set out the bottle and a glass of water, and spun the empty whiskey glass along the polished mahogany. With a hand that was shaking as if with palsy, Philip tilted the bottle, poured himself a drink that ignored the miniature pig etched in the side of the glass with the motto, “Don’t drown the hog,” and gulped it down. The neat liquor was like a draft of liquid fire to his unaccustomed palate and throat, and he choked and strangled until the bartender reached over and put the glass of water into his hand with a grinning comment: “Guess you hain’t got the knack yet o’ takin’ it straight, son. Wash ’er down with a chaser o’ water.” With his throat still afire, Philip took to the streets. Since the huge drink he had just swallowed was the first he had ever taken, its intoxicating effect was almost instantaneous. Before he had walked half a dozen blocks his brain was spinning and he fancied he was treading upon thin air. From that time on, consciousness faded little by little; all he knew was that he was walking, walking endlessly, sometimes through streets that seemed dimly familiar, at other times with all the surroundings singularly strange. Finally he found himself climbing what he took to be the steps of the Alamo Building to his rooms, drenched and permeated now with an overpowering desire to sleep. In some odd way the steps did not seem quite right; there were not enough of them. And there was a lighted door at the top which was opened for him before he could reach for the knob. It was at this conjuncture that reasoning consciousness forsook him completely. He had a vague impression that somebody--Bromley it would be, of course,--was leading him somewhere; that his feet, from being so lately shod with wings, had become unaccountably leaden; that there were more steps to be climbed; and after that, the oblivion of a sleep profound and trance-like. When he awoke he found himself lying, fully clothed, upon a bed in a strange room. The window shades were drawn, but the morning sun was shining upon them. On the edge of the bed, with her single garment slipping over one shoulder, sat a girl with carmined lips and pencilled eyebrows; she was laughing at him and saying: “Had a good sleep, honey?” adding: “You certainly had a lovely jag on last night when you turned up here. Did somebody dope you?” Philip leaped up and slewed himself around to sit beside the strange girl. The quick movement set a trip-hammer pounding in his head, and he had to wince and press his temples and wait a minute before he could master the throbbing pain and say, “Where am I?” “As if you didn’t know!” she gibed. “You sure had a skinful, but I guess you still knew enough to come where you’d be took care of. Here’s your pocketbook. Wonder somebody didn’t nip it off you before you got here.” Slowly he began to realize where he was. “Are you trying to tell me that I’ve been here all night, with you?”