that Pa couldn't possibly raise money to buy out the Pruntys, and that they could be calculated upon not to pay Pa anything like what his stock was worth.
"I see," said Billy, "you are being squeezed by the stronger party."
He was looking out of the window in an abstracted sort of way, but he came to when I answered that, personally, I hadn't been conscious of anything of the sort.
When the conversation got around to the business again, Billy told me that Goucher – a Missourian that the Pruntys had injected into the business, and who was perfectly slavish in his subserviency to Enos – had been quizzing around Billy, trying to find out what ailed Pa, and if it was anything serious.
"I didn't like the little emissary," said Billy, "and so I told him that Mr. Blunt was precariously ill, with a complication of Bright's disease in its tertiary stage, and locomotor ataxia. He wrote down the Bright's disease and asked me how to spell the other. I told him that the Bright's disease would probably terminate fatally before he could master so much orthography; and still he didn't tumble! Goucher went away conscious of having performed well an important piece of work. I can't help thinking now that this incident has more significance than I then supposed."
He sat puckering up his brows for a long time, and I let him pucker.
At last he said: "Dolly, I shouldn't a bit wonder if they are trying to take some advantage of a dying man. I can see how they work the problem out. 'Here is a sick man,' they say, 'who has been doing the work of half a dozen for twenty years. He is going to pieces physically. If he has some fatal disease, and knows it, we can settle with him, and make him pay a few hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of getting his daughter's inheritance disentangled from a business which she can't run, and in which she will be at the mercy of – of people with whom her relations are a little strained. But first, we'll find out just how sick he is, and whether he's likely to get well soon, or at all.' And so they send Goucher mousing about; and he reports Bright's disease, and something else he can't spell, and they make an appointment with Helmerston for to-morrow morning to find out more about it, Mr. Goucher not being very clear. And your father's rather fierce manner of hiding what his ailment really is makes them all the more suspicious."
"You tell them," said I, firing up, "that Pa is still able – "
But I saw that Billy had one of those epoch-making ideas which mark the crises of history, and I stopped spellbound. He finally struck himself a fearful blow upon the knee, and said that he had it, and one looking at him could easily believe it. Then he explained to me his plan for discomfiting the Pruntys and hoisting them by their own petard. This is deeply psychological, being based upon an intuitive perception of what a Prunty would do when he believed certain things and had money at stake.
"I must take responsibility in this," said Billy, squaring his shoulders, "and bet my job on my success, and put our happiness in jeopardy. But, if we win, Mr. Blunt can never again say that I am an engineer only, with no head for practical business; and I shall have outlived the disgrace of my Tech training – and the nickname. You must handle your father, and keep me informed of any engagement the Pruntys make with him. I must do the rest. And, if I lose, it's back to climbing poles again!"
I asked Billy if I couldn't do something in line work, and he said I might carry the pliers. And when I said I meant it, he behaved beautifully, and called me his angel, and – and violated the rules, you know – and went away in a perfect frenzy of determination. I felt a solemn joy in spying on Pa and reporting to Billy. It seemed like a foretaste of a life all bound up and merged with his. And this is what took place:
The elder Mr. Prunty called on Billy and said he was appalled at the news Mr. Goucher brought that Mr. Blunt had Bright's disease; and was there any hope that the doctors might be mistaken?
Billy told him that the recent progress in bacteriological science, with which Mr. Prunty was no doubt fully conversant, seemed to make the diagnosis a cinch. By this he meant that they were sure about it.
"I see," said the driver. "I've heared the word afore."
He used a term that Mr. Prunty understood, Billy said, owing to his having done business all his life with reference to it.
Mr. Prunty suggested that people live a long time with Bright's disease, sometimes.
Billy, who is really a great actor, here grew mysterious, and told Mr. Prunty that, being mixed up with Mr. Blunt in business, it seemed a pity that he, Mr. Prunty, should have the real situation concealed from him, and that, as a matter of fact, Mr. Blunt's most pronounced outward symptom was a very badly ulcerated index toe. This of Billy's own knowledge, and Mr. Prunty might depend upon it.
Mr. Prunty studied on this for a long time, and then remarked that he had known several people to recover from sore toes.
Billy then pulled a book – a medical work he had borrowed – from under the desk, and showed Mr. Prunty a passage in which it was laid down that people's toes come off sometimes, in a most inconvenient way, in the last stages of Bright's disease. Mr. Prunty read the whole page, including a description of the way that dread disease ruins the complexion, by making it pasty and corpselike, and then laid the book down with conviction in his eyes.
"From this," said he, motioning at the book with his glasses, "it would seem to be all off."
"If it's Bright's disease," said Billy, "that causes this lesion of the major lower digit, the prognosis is, no doubt, extremely grave. But while there's life, you know – "
"Yes," answered Mr. Prunty, "that is a comfort, of course. Does he know what ails him?"
"He is fully aware of his condition," said Billy, "but, unfortunately, not yet resigned to it." (I should think not.)
"I see you have been studying this thing out," said Mr. Prunty, "as exactly as if it had been an engineering problem; and I want to say, Mr. Helmerston, that I like your style. If we ever control this business the future of such careful and competent and far-sighted men as yourself – in fact, I may say your future – will be bright and assured. Have you any more information for me as to this – this sad affair of Blunt's?"
Billy thanked him, and said he hadn't, at present, and Mr. Prunty went away, trying to look sad. Billy went to the bank in Pa's name and arranged for a lot of money to be used in acquiring the Prunty stock, if it should be needed. The stock was worth twice as much, and the bank people knew it, and couldn't have believed, of course, that we would get it for that. Then the Pruntys made an engagement with me for Pa over the telephone, for a certain hour of a certain day, and I told Billy.
"The time has come," said Billy, when the plot began thickening in this way, "for Little Willie to beard the lion in his den. Smuggle me into the room an hour before the Pruntys are due, darling, and we'll cast the die."
I was all pale and quivery when I kissed Billy – in that sort of serious way in which we women kiss people we like, when we tell them to come back with their shields or on them – and pushed him into the room.
I heard all they said. It was dark in there, and Pa thought at first that it was a Prunty. Pa was sitting in the Morris chair, with his foot on a rest.
"That you, Enos?" said he. "Help yourself to a chair. I'm kind of laid up for repairs."
"It's Helmerston," said Billy. "I called to talk to you about this affair with Mr. Prunty. I have some information which may be of value to you."
Pa sat as still as an image for perhaps a minute. I could almost hear his thoughts. He was anathematizing Billy mentally for butting in, but he was too good a strategist to throw away any valuable knowledge.
