Ray opened a compartment beneath one of the bookcases, and found a bottle and some glasses.  “Aha,” he muttered, “our janitor doesn’t drink, I perceive.  Join me?” Mr. Trumble accepted, and Ray explained, cheerfully:  “Richard Lindley’s got me so cowed I’m afraid to go near any of my old joints.  You see, he trails me; the scoundrel has kept me sober for whole days at a time, and I’ve been mortified, having old friends see me in that condition; so I have to sneak up here to my own office to drink to Cora, now and then.  You mustn’t tell him.  What’s she been doing to you, lately?”

The little man addressed grew red with the sharp, resentful memory.  “Oh, nothing!  Just struck me in the face with her parasol on the public street, that’s all!” He gave an account of his walk to church with Cora.  “I’m through with that girl!” he exclaimed vindictively, in conclusion.  “It was the damnedest thing you ever saw in your life:  right in broad daylight, in front of the church.  And she laughed when she did it; you’d have thought she was knocking a puppy out of her way.  She can’t do that to me twice, I tell you.  What the devil do you see to laugh at?”

“You’ll be around,” returned his companion, refilling the glasses, “asking for more, the first chance she gives you.  Here’s her health!”

“I don’t drink it!” cried Mr. Trumble angrily.

“And I’m through with her for good, I tell you!  I’m not your kind:  I don’t let a girl like that upset me till I can’t think of anything else, and go making such an ass of myself that the whole town gabbles about it.  Cora Madison’s seen the last of me, I’ll thank you to notice.  She’s never been half-decent to me; cut dances with me all last winter; kept me hanging round the outskirts of every crowd she was in; stuck me with Laura and her mother every time she had a chance; then has the nerve to try to use me, so’s she can make a bigger hit with a new man!  You can bet your head I’m through!  She’ll get paid though!  Oh, she’ll get paid for it!”

“How?” laughed Ray.

It was a difficult question.  “You wait and see,” responded the threatener, feebly.  “Just wait and see.  She’s wild about this Corliss, I tell you,” he continued, with renewed vehemence.  “She’s crazy about him; she’s lost her head at last——­”

“You mean he’s going to avenge you?”

“No, I don’t, though he might, if she decided to marry him.”

“Do you know,” said Ray slowly, glancing over his glass at his nervous companion, “it doesn’t strike me that Mr. Valentine Corliss has much the air of a marrying man.”

“He has the air to me,” observed Mr. Trumble, “of a darned bad lot!  But I have to hand it to him:  he’s a wizard.  He’s got something besides his good looks—­a man that could get Cora Madison interested in `business’!  In oil!  Cora Madison!  How do you suppose——­”

His companion began to laugh again.  “You don’t really suppose he talked his oil business to her, do you, Trumble?”