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.
There was evidently somebody in the second room; Duane had also noticed a motor waiting outside as he descended from his cab; so he took a seat and sat twirling his walking-stick between his knees, gloomily inspecting a room which, in pleasanter days, had not been unfamiliar to him.
Instead of the servant returning, there came a click from the elevator, a quick step, and the master of the house himself walked swiftly into the room wearing hat and gloves.
"What do you want ?" he inquired briefly.
"I want to ask you a question or two," said Duane, shocked at the change in Dysart's face.