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The Streets of Ascalon
The Streets of Ascalon Episodes in the Unfinished Career of Richard Quarren, Esqre
CHAPTER I
It being rent day, and Saturday, the staff of the "Irish Legation," with the exception of Westguard, began to migrate uptown for the monthly conference, returning one by one from that mysterious financial jungle popularly known as "Downtown." As for Westguard, he had been in his apartment all day as usual. He worked where he resided.
A little before five o'clock John Desmond Lacy, Jr., came in, went directly to his rooms on the top floor, fished out a check-book, and tried to persuade himself that he had a pleasing balance at the bank – not because he was likely to have any balance either there or in his youthful brain, but because he had to have one somewhere. God being good to the Irish he found he had not overdrawn his account.
Roger O'Hara knocked on his door, later, and receiving no response called out: "Are you in there, Jack?"
"No," said Lacy, scratching away with his pen in passionate hopes of discovering a still bigger balance.
"Sportin' your oak, old Skeezicks?" inquired O'Hara, affectionately, delivering a kick at the door.
"Let me alone, you wild Irishman!" shouted Lacy. "If I can't dig out an extra hundred somewhere the State Superintendent is likely to sport my oak for keeps!"
A big, lumbering, broad-shouldered young fellow was coming up the stairs behind O'Hara, a blank book and some papers tucked under his arm, and O'Hara nodded to him and opened Mr. Lacy's door without further parleying.
"Here's Westguard, now," he said; "and as we can't shoot landlords in the close season we'll have to make arrangements to pay for bed and board, Jack."
Lacy glanced up from the sheet of figures before him, then waved his guests to seats and lighted a cigarette.
"Hooray," he remarked to Westguard; "I can draw you a check, Karl, and live to tell the tale." And he rose and gave his place at the desk to the man addressed, who seated himself heavily, as though tired.