Moving to the bureau he pulled out a lower drawer and brought forth a bottle partially filled with a brownish liquid. To his lips he tipped it, and for several seconds his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively to a gurgling accompaniment.
Barely at the halfway mark, between twenty and thirty years, Reynolds had already reached the stage where a morning drink seemed a necessity. He lowered the bottle, its contents emptied by half, to the bureau top; and an artificial sense of buoyancy pervaded his being. The throbbing pain in his head was deadened to a dull ache, and the burning flavor of the liquor upon his tongue had washed away the moldy taste.
He dully pondered as to what had taken place on the previous evening, but his remembrances of events occurring after eleven o’clock or thereabouts on the night before were decidedly limited. Some one had escorted him to the front door of his lodging house; he had dizzily ascended the stairs and managed to open the door of his room—that was all he could recall.
A gentle tapping on the door broke in upon his thoughts.
“What is it?” he grunted.
“Mr. Kineally wishes to see you,” was the reply. The voice belonged to his landlady.
Reynolds hesitated momentarily. He was tempted to have the landlady say that he was not at home. But what was the use! Kineally would “bawl him out” later; so why not have it over with!
“All right! Send him up!” Reynolds answered.
He had hardly time to whisk the bottle from the bureau to its place in the drawer when an imperative rapping threatened the door panel.