The Danger Mark

"I wish I were going up to Roya-Neh with you," repeated Grandcourt. "I had a bully time up there—everybody was unusually nice to me, and I had a fine time."

"I know they'll ask you up whenever you can get away," said Duane. "Geraldine Seagrave likes you immensely."

"Does she?" exclaimed Grandcourt, blushing. "I'd rather believe that than almost anything! She was very, very kind to me, I can tell you; and Lord knows why, because I've nothing intellectual to offer anybody, and I certainly am not pretty!"

Duane, very much amused, looked at his watch.

"When does your train leave?" asked Grandcourt.

"I've an hour yet."

"Come up to my room and smoke. I've better whiskey than we dispense down here. I'm living at the club, you know. They haven't yet got over my fiasco at home and I can't stand their joshing."

Neither of the men noticed that a third man followed them, stumbling up the stairs as they took the elevator. Duane was seated in an easy chair by the fire, Grandcourt in another, the decanter stood on a low table between them, when, without formality, the door opened and young Quest appeared on the threshold, white, self-assertive, and aggressively at his ease:

"If you fellows don't mind, I'll butt in a moment," he said. "How are you, Mallett? How are you?" giving Grandcourt an impertinent look; and added: "Do you, by any chance, expect your friend Dysart in here this afternoon?"

"Dysart is no longer a member of this club," said Grandcourt quietly. "I've told you that a dozen times."

"All right, I'll ask you two dozen times more, if I choose," retorted Quest. "Why not?" And he gave him an ugly stare.

The man was just drunk enough to be quarrelsome. Duane paid him no further attention; Grandcourt asked him very civilly if he could do anything for him.

"Sure," sneered Quest. "You can tell Dysart that if I ever come across him I'll shoot him on sight! Tell him that and be damned!"

"I've already told him that," said Grandcourt with a shrug of contempt.

The weak, vicious face of the other reddened:

"What do you mean by taking that tone with me?" he demanded loudly. "Do you think I won't make good?" He fumbled around in his clothing for a moment and presently jerked a pistol free—one of the automatic kind with rubber butt and blued barrel.

"Unless you are drunker than I've ever seen you," said Grandcourt, "you'll put up that pistol before I do."

Quest cursed him steadily for a minute: "Do you think I haven't got the nerve to use it when m' honour's 'volved? I tell you," he said thickly, "when m' honour's 'volved–"

"You get drunk, don't you?" observed Duane. "What a pitiful pup you are, anyway. Go to bed."

Quest stood swaying slightly on his heels and considering Duane with the inquiring solemnity of one who is in process of grasping and digesting an abstruse proposition.

"B-bed?" he repeated; "me?"

"Certainly. A member of this club disgracefully drunk in the afternoon will certainly hear from the governing board unless he keeps out of sight until he's sane again."

"Thank you," said Quest with owlish condescension; "I'm indebted to you for calling 'tention to m-matters which 'volve honour of m' own club and–"

His voice rambled off into a mutter; he sat or rather fell into an armchair and lay there twitching and mumbling to himself and inspecting his automatic pistol with prominent watery eyes.

"You'd better leave that squirt-gun with me," said Grandcourt.

Quest refused with an oath, and, leaning forward and hammering the padded chair-arm with his unhealthy looking fist, he broke out into a violent arraignment of Dysart:

"Damn him!" he yelled, "I've written him, I've asked for an explanation, I've 'm-manded t' know why his name's coupled with my sister's–"

Duane leaned over, slammed the door, and turned short on Quest:

"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Do you hear! Shut up!"

"No, I won't shut up! I'll say what I damn please–"

"Haven't you any decency at all–"

"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 for her—a fine legacy, a fine prop for her to lean on. That's the sort of protection she has had all her life; that's the example set her in her own home. I don't know what she's done; it's none of my business; but, Duane, I'm for her!"

"So am I."

They stood together in silence for a moment; maudlin sniffles of self-pity arose from the corner by the fire, alternating with more hysterical and more ominous sounds presaging some spasmodic crisis.

Grandcourt said: "Bunny Gray has helped me kennel this pup once or twice. He's in the club; I think I'll send for him."

"You'll need help," nodded Duane. "I'll call up the hospital on my way to the station. Good-bye, Delancy."

They shook hands and parted.

At the station Duane telephoned to the hospital, got Dr. Bailey, arranged for a room in a private ward, and had barely time to catch his train—in fact, he was in such a hurry that he passed by without seeing the sister of the very man for whom he had been making such significant arrangements.

She wore, as usual, her pretty chinchilla furs, but was so closely veiled that he might not have recognised her under any circumstances. She, however, forgetting that she was veiled, remained uncertain as to whether his failure to speak to her had been intentional or otherwise. She had halted, expecting him to speak; now she passed on, cheeks burning, a faint sinking sensation in her heart.

For she cared a great deal about Duane's friendship; and she was very unhappy, and morbid and more easily wounded than ever, because somehow it had come to her ears that rumour was busily hinting things unthinkable concerning her—nothing definite; yet the very vagueness of it added to her distress and horror.

Around her silly head trouble was accumulating very fast since Jack Dysart had come sauntering into her youthful isolation; and in the beginning it had been what it usually is to lonely hearts—shy and grateful recognition of a friendship that flattered; fascination, an infatuation, innocent enough, until the man in the combination awoke her to the terrors of stranger emotions involving her deeper and deeper until she lost her head, and he, for the first time in all his career, lost his coolly selfish caution.