Alarmed, for I had not the slightest idea that The Boy was there, I turned and saw him staggering blindly from the room. He ran against a hat-tree, and some of the men laughed, but I saw his face, and I knew that it was not the drink that made him look so ghastly.
I hurried up to the card-room where the Colonel was playing his evening game of whist, and, whispering a word in his ear, I got him into an alcove and told him what had just taken place.
“Good God! this is horrible,” he muttered; “why, it’s his own mother, and he knows it.”
We hastened from the club, but there were no carriages in sight outside.
“The Boy just staggered out bareheaded, and drove off toward his hotel in the only cab here,” said Perkins, who was coming up the steps. “What’s the matter with him? I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. Stewed again?”
We did not stop to satisfy his curiosity, but walked rapidly up to the Algonquin.
“He went up-stairs about ten minutes ago,” the clerk told us in answer to our question, and grinned knowingly.
The door of his room was not locked, and after knocking several times without getting any reply, we went in, and found just what I had feared we should find, The Boy lying face downwards on the floor, one hand clasping a discharged revolver. I looked at the powder-stained cheek, and though I felt that it was absolutely hopeless, I left the Colonel kneeling by his side, and hurried out in search of a doctor. As I stood by the front door hesitating which way to go, a trap was driven up under the electric lights, and a beardless youth in lieutenant’s uniform helped a loudly-dressed woman to alight. They walked through the foyer, and entered the elevator laughing and talking, while a little yellow dog, covered with ribbons, capered and barked in front of them.
It was The Painted Lady--and another boy.
The following advertisement, even had it ever appeared in any of the great dailies, would probably have occasioned little comment or curiosity:--
Those who are weary of the laws and so-called “society restrictions” of the present day can find an immediate and complete relief by applying at once to JENIFER VASS, Lock Box 3265B.
Even in 1885, though the business had not then attained the gigantic proportions of the present day, the advertising genius was still at work; and any one chancing to read such a notice would no doubt have set it down as the bait thrown out by the vendor of some patent medicine, weight lift, or equally undesirable article.