The latter said:  “I want to write a book entitled ’Gentleman I Have Kicked.’  Of course I’ve only kicked ’em mentally; but my! what a list I have!—­all sorts, all nations—­from certain domestic and predatory statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress notorious in a decadent novel!—­all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally I’ve just used my foot on another social favorite——­”

“Dysart!” said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged Wilton’s pardon.

“You’ve sure got a disconcerting way with you,” admitted Wilton, very much out of countenance.

“It was rotten bad taste in me——­”

Wilton grinned with a wry face:  “Nobody is standing much on ceremony these days.  Besides, I’m on to your trail, young man”—­tapping the bundle under his arm—­“your eye happened to catch that superscription; no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to—­a rather embarrassing conclusion.”

Duane’s serious face fell: 

“My father and I have not talked on that subject, Guy.  Are you going up to see him now?”

Wilton hesitated:  “I suppose I am....  See here, Duane, how much do you know about—­anything?”

“Nothing,” he said without humour; “I’m beginning to worry over my father’s health....  Guy, don’t tell me anything that my father’s son ought not to know; but is there something I should know and don’t?—­anything in which I could possibly be of help to my father?”

Wilton looked carefully at a distant policeman for nearly a minute, then his meditative glance became focussed on vacancy.

“I—­don’t—­know,” he said slowly.  “I’m going to see your father now.  If there is anything to tell, I think he ought to tell it to you.  Don’t you?”

“Yes.  But he won’t.  Guy, I don’t care a damn about anything except his health and happiness.  If anything threatens either, he won’t tell me, but don’t you think I ought to know?”

“You ask too hard a question for me to answer.”

“Then can you answer me this?  Is father at all involved in any of Jack Dysart’s schemes?”

“I—­had better not answer, Duane.”

“You know best.  You understand that it is nothing except anxiety for his personal condition that I thought warranted my butting into his affairs and yours.”

“Yes, I understand.  Let me think over things for a day or two.  Now I’ve got to hustle.  Good-bye.”

He hastened on eastward; Duane went west, slowly, more slowly, halted, head bent in troubled concentration; then he wheeled in his tracks with nervous decision, walked back to the Plaza Club, sent for a cab, and presently rattled off up-town.

In a few minutes the cab swung east and came to a standstill a few doors from Fifth Avenue; and Duane sprang out and touched the button at a bronze grille.

The servant who admitted him addressed him by name with smiling deference and ushered him into a two-room reception suite beyond the tiny elevator.