“Who told you I knowed this here now Jack Harpe?” probed Luke Tweezy, when he had smacked his lips over a second drink.

“I don’t remember now,” evaded Racey Dawson.  “What does it matter?”

“It don’t matter,” was the answer—­the miffed answer it seemed to Racey.  “It don’t matter a-tall.  Have one on me, boys.  Don’t be afraid to fill ’em up.  They’s plenty more on the back shelf when this one’s empty.”

They filled and drank, filled and drank.  Swing thought that he had never seen Racey overtaken by liquor so quickly.  In no time he was telling Luke Tweezy the most intimate details of his private life.  Swing knew that these details were a string of lies.  But Luke Tweezy could not know that.  He put an affectionate hand on Racey’s shoulder and begged for more.  He got it.

When Racey ran down and reverted to the bottle, Luke Tweezy generously purchased a second and invited him and his friend to a vacant table in the corner of the room.  It was an amazing sight.  Luke Tweezy the money-lender, the man who was supposed to still possess the first dollar he ever earned, had actually bought three eighths of one bottle of whiskey and the whole of another.

Racey Dawson greatly desired to laugh.  But he didn’t dare.  He was too busy being drunk and getting drunker.  Swing Tunstall, slow in the uptake as usual, perceived nothing beyond the fact that Luke Tweezy had suddenly become a careless spendthrift till halfway down the second bottle when Luke said: 

“Shore is funny how you thought I knowed this Jack Harpe.”

“Yuh-yeah,” assented Racey, and overset a glass in such a way that four fingers of raw liquor splashed into Luke Tweezy’s lap.  “S’funny all right—­an’ that’s fuf-funnier,” he added as Luke and his chair scraped backward to avoid the drip.  “D’I wet yuh all up, Lul-luke?  Mum-my min-mis-take.  I’m makin’ lul-lots of mistakes to-day.”

Luke Tweezy twisted his leathery features into his best smile.  “It don’t matter,” he told Racey.  “Not a-tall.  I—­uh—­who was it told you I knowed this Jack Harpe?”

“Dud-don’t remember,” denied Racey.

“Think,” urged Luke Tweezy.

“Am thu-thinkin’,” Racey said, crossly.  “What you wanna know for?”

“I don’t like to have folks talkin’ so loose and free about me,” was the Tweezy explanation.

“Duh-hic-quite right,” hiccuped Racey Dawson.  “An’ you are, too, y’old catawampus.  You a friend o’ mim-mine, Lul-luke?”

“Shore,” said Luke, with an eye out for another upset glass.

“Then lend me huh-hundred dollars, Lul-Luke.”

“Lend you a hundred dollars!  On what security?”

“My wuh-word,” Racey strove to say with dignity.  “Ain’t that enough?”

“Shore, but—­but I ain’t got a hundred dollars with me to-day.”

“Bub-but you can gug-get it,” Racey insisted, weaving his head from side to side in a snake-like manner.