"I've enough to fix Dysart good and plenty, and I'll do it! I'll--let go
of me, Mallett!--let go, I tell you or----"

Duane jerked the pistol from his shaky fingers, and when Quest struggled
to his feet with a baffled howl, jammed him back into the chair again
and handed the pistol to Grandcourt, who locked it in a bureau drawer
and pocketed the key.

"You belong in Matteawan," said the latter, flinging Quest back into the
chair again as the infuriated man still struggled to rise. "You
miserable drunken kid--do you think you would be enhancing your sister's
reputation by dragging her name into a murder trial? What are you,
anyway? By God, if I didn't know your sister as a thoroughbred, I'd have
you posted here for a mongrel and sent packing. The pound is your proper
place, not a club-house"; which was an astonishing speech for Delancy
Grandcourt.

Again, half contemptuously, but with something almost vicious in his
violence, Grandcourt slammed young Quest back into the chair from which
he had attempted to hurl himself: "Keep quiet," he said; "you're a
particularly vile little wretch, particularly pitiable; but your sister
is a girl of gentle breeding--a sweet, charming, sincere young girl whom
everybody admires and respects. If you are anything but a gutter-mut,
you'll respect her, too, and the only way you can do it is by shutting
that unsanitary whiskey-trap of yours--and keeping it shut--and by
remaining as far away from her as you can, permanently."

There were one or two more encounters, brief ones; then Quest collapsed
and began to cry. He was shaking, too, all over, apparently on the verge
of some alcoholic crisis.

Grandcourt went over to Duane:

"The man is sick, helplessly sick in mind and body. If you'll telephone
Bailey at the Knickerbocker Hospital, he'll send an ambulance and I'll
go up there with this fool boy. He's been like this before. Bailey knows
what to do. Telephone from the station; I don't want the club servants
to gossip any more than is necessary. Do you mind doing it?"

"Of course not," said Duane. He glanced at the miserable, snivelling,
twitching creature by the fire: "Do you think he'll get over this, or
will he buy another pistol the next time he gets the jumps?"

Grandcourt looked troubled:

"I don't know what this breed is likely to do. He's absolutely no good.
He's the only person in the world that is left of the family--except his
sister. He's all she has had to look out fo