ally 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?"

"Yes. He's doing the groups for the new opera for us."

Quair, watching Graylock, was seized with a malicious impulse:

"Neat little skirt he has up there--that White girl," he remarked,
seating himself on Graylock's polished table.

A dull flush stained Graylock's cheekbones, and his keen eyes turned on
Quair. The latter lighted a cigarette, expelled the smoke in two thin
streams from his abnormally narrow nostrils.

"Some skirt," he repeated. "And it looks as though old Drene had her
number--"

Guilder's level voice interrupted:

"The contracts are ready to be--"

But Graylock, not heeding, and perhaps not hearing, and looking all the
time at Quair, said slowly:

"Drene isn't that kind.... Is he?"

"Our kind, you mean?" inquired Quair, with a malice so buried under
flippancy that the deliberate effrontery passed for it with Graylock.
Which amused Quair for a moment, but the satisfaction was not
sufficient. He desired that Graylock should feel the gaff.

"Drene," he said, "is one of those fussers who jellify when hurled on
their necks--the kind that ask that kind of girl to marry them after
she's turned down everything else they suggest."

Graylock's square jaw tightened and his steady eye