“Oh!” said the little man hastily—­“I was only wondering....  But I wish you would slip Red the high sign:  all I want is one word with him.”

“All right, bo’—­you’re on.”

Slouching off, obviously reluctant to interrupt the diversions of Mr. November, the man at length mustered up courage to touch that gentleman’s elbow.  The gangster turned sharply, a frown replacing the smile which had illuminated his attempts to overcome the boy’s recently developed aversion to drink.  The waiter murmured in his private ear.

Promptly P. Sybarite received a sharp look from eyes as black and hard as shoe buttons; and with equanimity endured it—­even went to the length of a nod accompanied by his quaint, ingratiating smile.  A courtesy ignored completely:  the dark eyes veered back to the waiter’s face and the white teeth flashed as he was curtly dismissed.

He shuffled back, scowling, reported sulkily:  “Says yuh gotta wait”; and turned away in answer to a summons from another table.

Unruffled, P. Sybarite sipped his beer—­sipped it sparingly and not without misgivings, but sedulously to keep in character as a familiar of the dive.

Presently there came yet another lull in the clatter of tongues; and again the accents of the boy sounded distinctly from the gangster’s table: 

“I won’t—­that’s flat!  I refuse positively—­go up stairs—­sleep it off.  I’m a’ right—­give you m’ word—­in the head.  All my trouble’s—­these mutinous dogs of legs.  But I’ll make ’em mind, yet.  Trust me—­”

And again the babel blotted out his utterance.

But P. Sybarite had experienced a sudden rush of intelligence to the head—­was in the throes of that mental process which it is our habit wittily to distinguish by the expressive term, “putting two and two together.”

Could this, by any chance, be “that boy” who, Mr. Brian Shaynon had been assured, wouldn’t know where he’d been when he waked?  Was an attempt to ensure that desired consummation through the agency of a drug, being made in the open restaurant?

If not, why was Red November neglecting all other affairs to press drink upon a man who knew when he had enough?

If so, what might be the nature of the link connecting the boy with the “job,” to be on which at half-past two November had just now covenanted with Brian Shaynon?

What incriminating knowledge could this boy possess, to render old Shaynon, willing that his memory should be expurgated by such a mind- and nerve-shattering agent as the knock-out drop of White Light commerce?

Now Shaynon was capable of almost any degree of infamy, if not, perhaps, the absolute peer of Red November.

This strange development of that night of Destiny began to assume in P. Sybarite’s esteem a complexion of baleful promise.

But the more keenly interested he grew, the more indifferent he made himself appear, slouching low and lower in his chair, his eyes listless and half closed—­his look one of the most pronounced apathy:  the while he conned the circumstances, physical as well as psychical, with the narrowest attention.  Certainly, it would seem, a man who had enough instinctive decency to wish to escape the degradation of deeper drunkenness, should be humoured rather than opposed....