Was this what Lovaina was bursting with?

They all remained quiet, until McHenry, with an oath, blurted out: 

“What the hell’s the good of all this bloody silence?  He’s been away and don’t know.”  Then turning to me, he slapped me on the shoulder and bawled: 

“We’ll have a drink on you, O’Brien!  David blew his brains out on Llewellyn’s doorstep just after we left for the Marquesas.  Joseph, bring one all around!”

As if at his word Llewellyn came up the stairs.  His countenance was blacker than usual, his eyes more than half closed under their clouds of brows.  His shoulders drooped, and he thumped his stick on the floor of the club as he came toward us.  I felt certain that he detected something in the air—­a sudden cessation of talk or a strained attitude on our part.  He drooped heavily into a chair, and banged his stick on his chair-leg.

“Joseph,” he called, “give me a Doctor Funk.  Quick!  No, make it straight absinthe.”

Our own drinks were coming by now, and as the steward stirred about, Llewellyn for the first time saw me.

“Hello!  Where did you come from?  I thought you had gone back to the States.”

“I’ve been past the isthmus,” I replied, “and I haven’t seen a soul or heard a word in that time.  What’s this terrible thing about young David?”

Llewellyn’s arm jerked convulsively toward his body and knocked his glass from the table.

“Joseph, for God’s sake, bring me a drink!  Bring me a double absinthe!”

Joseph fetched the drink hurriedly, and stopped to pick up the broken glass.

“Mon dieu!” snapped Llewellyn, “you can do that afterward.  Clear out!”

Then he turned to me, and his eyes contracted into mere black gleams as he asked: 

“Are you like all these others?  By God!  I was passing the opium den here a few minutes ago, and I heard Hip Sing say something like that:  What have I to do with David?  Was I responsible for his death?  Any man can come to your front door and kill himself.  He was a friend of mine.  I didn’t see much of him before he died; I was busy with the vanilla.”

Llewellyn swept us with an inclusive glance.

“Now you fellows have got to stop bringing up this David matter when I come in here, or I’ll quit this club.”

Hallman answered him, spitefully: 

“For Heaven’s sake, Llewellyn, I never heard a living soul mention David before, except at first, when there was so much curiosity.  You’re bughouse.”

Fung Wah sat there, his small, astute eyes, in a saffron face, fixed alternately upon the speakers, with an appraising grimace but half-veiled.  And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his rise from the estate of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these Taipans, the whites of Tahiti.  He may or may not have known what rumors there were, but wanting the good-will of all influential residents in his widening scheme for money-making, he tried to soften the asperities of the interchange: