“’S queer,” he muttered. “He was in here a li’l’ spell ago. Wait a minute and I’ll dig ’im up f’r youse.”
Larry’s first impulse was to make a bolt for the street and the open air. Every clean-living fiber of him was protesting against the ribald clamor of the place, the smoke-soaked atmosphere, the sickening, stifling smell of liquor and stale beer. But the thought of Dick, and that one chance in a thousand that the whole thing wasn’t some wretched mistake, held him. Besides, at the command to “wait,” the man had shoved him into the little room and shut the door; but for that he was rather thankful, since it cut him off from the bar-room and its noisy occupants.
Pulling up one of the chairs, Larry sat down to make the best of what began to seem like a mighty disagreeable job. Naturally, all he could think of, at first, was the awful thing that had happened to Dick, and as he dwelt upon it, it seemed more and more unbelievable. Surely Lansing and Dick’s other friends in the Zeta Omegas wouldn’t let things come to such a pass after they had seen what a brave fight Dick was making to “come back” after his nearly fatal run-in with the Underhill bunch and the “Mixers.” Larry asked himself what a frat was for, anyway, if it couldn’t lay hold of a fellow who was in the dumps and jolly him over the rough places.
Thinking so hard about these things, it was perhaps five minutes or so before he began to realize the breathless, half-suffocating closeness of the little card-room, and the stifling alcoholic smell that seemed to be growing stronger the longer he had to breathe it. When he did realize it, he found that his head was swimming and his eyes were smarting strangely. Starting up to go and open the door, the dizziness half overcame him, and in trying to sit down again he missed the chair awkwardly and almost slid under the table.
While he was pulling himself up and wondering vaguely what had come over him, the door opened a little way, and the stubble-bearded man stuck his head in to say: “I’ve found out where yer pally went to. Come on, an’ we’ll go get him.”
Larry tried again to get up, and again the nauseating vertigo made him see black. “If I—could have a drink of—water,” he gasped, and he was dimly conscious of the disappearance of the hard-visaged man, and of his reappearance a little later with a glass of water. Little as he cared for the opinion of this hard-bitted person, he was ashamed of the way his hands shook when he took the glass and drained it to the last drop.
For a minute or so the cold drink seemed to revive him, but the effect was only temporary. When he tried once more to get upon his feet his legs refused to hold him up, and an immense desire to sleep came over him like a smothering pall. Struggling vainly against the overmastering lethargy, he dropped back into the chair and, bending over the table, hid his face in the crook of an arm just to rest for a second or so. And that was the last he remembered.
When he next opened his eyes, the low-slanting sun was shining in his face, and he was lying on a forkful of straw in what appeared to be a deserted cow stable. [Dazed and bewildered, he sat up and tried to make out where he was] and how he came to be there. Dimly and like the figures of a dream his latest waking recollections came straggling back; the noisy and noisome saloon; the stubble-bearded man who talked out of the corner of his mouth; the stifling atmosphere of the close little room in which he had been waiting for the man to return, bringing Dick Maxwell.
[Dazed and bewildered, he sat up and tried to make out where he was]