"I had better call my fighters. And you? Wouldn't it be well for you to go back? There may be violence, and——"
"No necessity whatever," Desirée interrupted cynically. "They will not strike a blow. I can vouch for that."
An instant she paused, as if summoning her will power to do a hateful thing. Then she swung the door sharply back and held her light inside.
"Look!" she commanded with bitter irony.
Dunvegan looked. The scene in the huge interior of the trading room struck him with disgust as well as surprise. Around the long, rough table over a score of men and halfbreed women lay in drunken stupor. A liquor barrel crowned the board. At the table's end one man's debauched face lay on the breast of his halfbreed Bacchante of the revel. Bruce recognized the features of Glyndon, enpurpled and drink-puffed. The rest of the revelers had fallen into every imaginable attitude expressive of uncontrolled muscle and befuddled mind.
The stench of spirits was overpowering. Dunvegan drew Desirée back.
"This is sickening," he cried.
She gazed at Bruce with an intensity that went to the heart of him. The look awakened glad, magnetic throbs, yet left uneasy forebodings for the future because her eyes prophesied things which could never be.
"Now you know," she replied, pointing at the table. "I have shown you why."
And in her words Dunvegan read the answer to more than one riddle.