Carter observed Drake more carefully. The man was really ghastly to look at, with great puffs of fat below his bloodshot and heavy eyes. All were marks of mental disquietude, signs of irritation in his whole bearing that spoke of serious conflict in the person. The sight of it all so close really shocked Carter.

“I’ve had a dog’s time of it since that evening. Curse him! Your friend, I mean. I grant your statement about his being a fake, all right, but I’ll join with any crowd to drive him out of New York. I’ll help you, if that’s what you have come for. Didn’t you say once that you could prove him to be the prince of fakers? My God! I would give anything to even up that insult the other evening!”

Drake’s face was so black and forbidding that Carter was actually appalled. He recoiled from him. “Do you know where he can be found?”

“No. I heard this morning he had left town. If he doesn’t go soon, I know some people that will ask him, none too politely, to leave. But won’t you come in and have a drink? I was going over to Antonelli’s to get a brandy, but I might as well get it here. I’d ask you to bring your stuff up to the rooms, but Mrs. Drake is not very well. She’s been sick since that evening.”

Carter explained that he did not expect to stay with Drake and might leave town that night. Drake did not seem to care what Carter did; he simply turned to go down the avenue after an indifferent, “All right.”

Carter noted again Drake’s physical slovenliness and general breakdown. It was so marked as to be startling. “He looks like a man who is doomed,” he muttered to himself, “like so many I have known who have burned out. I said I didn’t want a drink. But I don’t know but I’ll have to have one to forget Drake’s looks when he uttered that curse on Jesus.”

He went up to his room without any fixed plan except a constant purpose that he must see Jesus, and even then he had no definite or clear thought about what he would do or say if he did find him. He sat in his room a while, doing nothing, staring out through the windows at the buildings across the Avenue.

Then he suddenly got up and went down into the street. He had not gone a block before he heard a shrill newsboy’s cry. He bought the first paper presented and backed up against a building to read. The first headlines read: