"Don't pay any attention to him," said Ashton-Kirk, smiling. "A thing such as you went through would be likely to upset any one."
"Of course it would," agreed Dennison, eagerly. "Tom Burton and myself were pretty intimate, and to find out suddenly that he'd gone down like that! Of course it would upset any one."
"You knew Burton for a long time, did you?"
"Not so very; maybe for seven or eight years. I met him at Danforth's place one night when he was playing roulette in big luck. That was about a year before he married Nora Cavanaugh, the actress." Dennison lighted a flat Turkish cigarette and inhaled a deep draught of smoke. "I was kind of surprised to hear about him being married, for he'd always talked against that state. He said it got a man into a great lot of trouble."
"Where was it you saw him on the night of his taking off?" asked the investigator.
"Why, at Danforth's. Things were a little dull," as though feeling an explanation of his presence in the gambling-house were necessary, "and I thought I'd drop around and get a little excitement out of the game if I could. Burton was there and had just been cleaned out; he was in an impatient sort of humor and was damning things at a tolerable speed. Nothing vicious, you know, but just enough to show his ginger."
"Had you much of a conversation with him?"
"Yes; quite a long one." Dennison puffed at his cigarette, quite pleased that he had an interested audience for his, for the time, favorite topic. "You see, when Tom was in hard luck, he was a great fellow for going back and calling up a lot of disagreeable things that had happened to him. Maybe that doesn't sound very cheerful, but it wasn't so bad to listen to. Burton had a past that was a bit different, you see. While I'm sure he was a first-class sport in all essential things, still he had mingled with a lot of people such as one seldom hears of outside novels. His comments upon his family were also rather frequent. Usually, if a fellow dislikes his family, he keeps it to himself, but Burton, when he was in the dumps, talked about it. His son, Frank, who draws the sporting cartoons for the Standard came in for an especially strong dressing down that night. It seems he makes a remarkable salary—for he's devilish clever, I think—and yet, when his father was broke, and called on him at odd times, over the telephone, for a little tide to carry him over the bar, he always turned him down flat. Tom regarded this as rank ingratitude. He was the boy's father, he said, and was entitled to certain consideration and respect. He boiled over the thing and said he meant to square the account some day."
"Burton as the wronged father is funny," observed Scanlon. "Why didn't he have a little quivery music, and some paper snow flakes to fall on him? That would have increased the effect."
"Maybe he wasn't altogether wrong," said Dennison, as though feeling bound to defend his friend. "A son has certain duties toward his father, I believe. But Burton couldn't expect much of that sort of thing from his children; for it seems they weren't trained right. You know their mother must have been a queer sort; set in her ways, and always complaining. She had the country school teacher's idea of life, and what part of it should be lived; and Burton never hit it with her properly. She brought up her children with the same views as her own; their father was always pointed out as the kind of person they must avoid. And with that sort of thing sounded in their ears continually, of course their attitudes, as they became older, were to be expected."