He had spent his fifteen thousand dollars! The blow was strong enough, sudden enough to penetrate even Vandover's clouded and distorted wits.

His nerves were gone in a minute, a sudden stupefying numbness fell upon his brain, and the fear of something unknown, the immense unreasoning terror that had gripped him for the first time the morning after Ida Wade's suicide came back upon him, horrible, crushing, so that he had to shut his teeth against a wild hysterical desire to rush through the streets screaming and waving his arms.
By the time the three friends had reached the restaurant where they were to eat their Thanksgiving dinner, Vandover's appetite had given place to a loathing of the very smell of food, his nervousness was fast approaching hysteria, the little nerve clusters all over his body seemed to be crisping and writhing like balls of tiny serpents, at intervals he would twitch sharply as though startled at some sudden noise, his breath coming short, his heart beating quick.
They had their dinner in one of the private rooms of the restaurant on the second floor.

All through the meal Vandover struggled to keep himself in hand, fighting with all his strength against this reappearance of his old enemy, this sudden return of the dreadful crisis, determined not to make an exhibition of himself before the others.

He pretended to eat, and forced himself to talk, joining in with Ellis, who was badgering the Dummy about Flossie.

The proper thing to do was to fill the Dummy's glass while his attention was otherwise absorbed, and in the end to get him so drunk that he could talk.