_your_ drink."

"I'll take Sassoon," assented de Spain, good-natured again and
shifting still another step to the left. "What do you fellows want
now?"

"We want to punch a hole through that strawberry," said Logan, "that
beauty-mark. Where did you get it, de Spain?"

"I might as well ask where you get your gall, Harvey," returned de
Spain, watching Logan hunch Sandusky toward the left that both might
crowd him closer. "I was born with my beauty-mark--just as you were
born with your damned bad manners," he added composedly, for in
hugging up to him his enemies were playing his game. "You can't help
it, neither can I," he went on. "Somebody is bound to pay for putting
that mark on me. Somebody is bound to pay for your manners. Why talk
about either? Sassoon, set out for your friends--or I will. Spread,
gentlemen, spread."

He had reached the position on which he believed his life depended,
and stood so close to the end of the bar that with a single step, as
he uttered the last words, he turned it. Sandusky pushed close next
him. De Spain continued to speak without hesitation or break, but the
words seemed to have no place in his mind. He was thinking only, and
saw only within his field of vision, a cut-glass button that fastened
the bottom of Sandusky's greased waistcoat.

"You've waited one day too long to collect for your strawberry, de
Spain," cried Logan shrilly. "You've turned one trick too many on the
Sinks, young fellow. If the man that put your mark on you ain't in
this room, you'll never get him."

"Which means, I take it, you're going to try to get me," smiled de
Spain.

"No," bellowed Morgan, "it means we have got you."

"You are fooling yourself, Harvey." De Spain addressed the warning to
Logan. "And you, too, Sandusky," he added.

"We'll take care of that," grinned Logan. Sandusky kept silence.

"You are jumping into another man's fight," protested de Spain
steadily.

"Sassoon's fight is our fight," interrupted Morgan.

"I advise you," said de Spain once more, looking with the words at
Sandusky and his crony, "to keep out of it."

"Sandusky," yelled Logan to his partner, "he advises me and you to
keep out of this fight," he shrilly laughed.

"Sure," assented Sandusky, but with no variation in tone and his eyes
on de Spain.

Logan, with an oath, leaned over the bar toward Sassoon, and pointed
contemptuously toward the end of the bar. "Shike!" he cried, "step
through the rail and take that