you think Elenore was interested in that young fellow?” he asked, finally.
“If she was, she never said so,” young Carrington replied. He was looking off in the direction of the Tray-Spot.
“If I were a girl, I’m inclined to think he could have me,” John Carrington announced.
Young Carrington’s laugh was lightly amused.
“If I were a girl, I’d lead him on a bit, myself,” he announced.
CHAPTER V
When Hastings had returned to the car the afternoon before, he told his uncle the story of his interview with the Carringtons quite simply. He was too wise to urge action upon a tired, out-of-temper man; nor did he wait for Mr. Wade’s comment. He shifted conversation to pleasanter things, and by the time Joseph had served them a nice little dinner Mr. Wade’s outer man bore the visible signs of gastronomic peace. A few games of cribbage, which he won, yet not too easily, were also a soothing influence. When Hastings said good-night, Mr. Wade opened the subject of his own accord.
“How did this claim of Carrington’s strike you, Laurence?”
“It struck me that we must satisfy ourselves about it as a matter of personal honor,” said Hastings, firmly. “Of course you will know better than I how and when to take the initiative.”
There was nothing that urged or insisted in his tone. It was quietly assured.
“Good-night, sir,” he smiled, and disappeared. Disappeared to dream that the car was a balloon, and that he was sailing swiftly through sunny skies to Elenore.
Mr. Livingstone Wade, over-fatigued, was jolted through dreamland by that unbridled nocturnal equine who bolts from one disaster to another.
The horror-stricken Mr. Wade found himself lunching at Sherry’s with the head waitress from Raegan’s. She had tied that knife-pleated apron around her neck, like a bib; and she told him things were “elegunt,” and he could call her Maggie.
She insisted on his drinking catsup instead of claret, and ordered the salad compounded with soft hematite instead of paprika.
All the directors of the bank were seated at a table near them; and they looked quite as appalled as Mr. Wade felt he would, had he seen any one of them in his place.
How he came to be in this awful predicament, he had no idea. He only knew that he was riveted to his chair, and that his face, in spite of his inward horror, would wear a pleased smile. And speech, though he strove desperately to articulate, was an impossibility.
Then Hastings appeared, and said seriously: “This, sir, is a matter that affects your personal honor.”
It was in a grim determination to escape from this purgatory at all hazards that Mr. Wade finally jumped himself awake; and though every muscle in his body ached throbbingly, he gave a sigh of contentment as he stirred his face on his pillow.
Trevanion, coming up to the house on a summons from John Carrington, found young Carrington coming down the steps, looking a bit more of a swashbuckling dandy than ever.
“Morning, Trevanion,” he greeted him, buoyantly.
Then he nodded toward the waiting trap.
“I’m going to pay a morning call on the owners of the Tray-Spot,” he announced, genially.
“Confound ’em!” muttered Trevanion.
The lad looked him straight in the eyes, in the way Trevanion found so remarkable.
“Oh, I think they’re square,” he said, lightly, “and that Richards’ day is about done. It will decide itself in a few days now, anyway.”
Trevanion watched him with a curious expression as he drove off.
Mr. Wade had wakened not only refreshed but in a mood which a certain irreverent clerk had once characterized as his “dusting off the earth day” and a good time to lie low. Hastings greeted the morning sun joyfully, because it shone on the little town where Elenore had spent her childhood.
Richards came in just as they were enjoying their after-breakfast cigars.
“Well,” he said, dropping into a chair without preliminary greetings, or waiting for Mr. Wade to request him to do so, “what’s the program for to-day?”
Then his eyes fell on Mr. Wade’s trouser legs.
“Told you it wouldn’t come off, didn’t I?” he laughed, boisterously.
Mr. Wade resented Richards’ unceremonious entrance, and resented still more this direct allusion to his sartorial disfigurement, which had resisted the most zealous efforts of Joseph. He considered that, under present circumstances, the legs should be considered as analogous to those of the Queen of Spain.
And that phrase of Hastings, “a matter of personal honor,” had hit the bull’s-eye.
Mr. Wade prided himself first that the family fortune had been made honestly, by the rise in Manhattan real estate; and last, that the Wade name stood in the business world to-day as a symbol of integrity that erred, if it erred at all, on the side of over-scrupulousness.
“Mr. Richards,” he said, a trifle stiffly, “when I inquired into the matter, you wrote me that Mr. Carrington’s grievance had no foundation in fact, did you not?”
The bluffness faded out of Richards’ face and left ugliness disclosed.
“He brought that old yarn back with him from Carrington’s yesterday, I suppose,” he sneered, jerking his head toward Hastings.
Hastings had that rare faculty of knowing when to let the game play itself.
“Very naturally, Mr. Richards,” said Mr. Wade, with dangerous smoothness; “but that is not the question.”
Richards’ face darkened.
“I’ll tell you what the question is, Mr. Wade, and you can settle it right now,” he snarled. “It’s whether you are going to take the word of the man who has made the mine, or the word of the man who’s trying to blackmail it, so’s he can buy it cheap.”
It was a good issue, so good that Richards himself was proud of it. He leaned back in his chair with something of a swagger.
“That you are still in charge of the Tray-Spot is the best proof of my confidence in you,” Mr. Wade said, in a more gracious tone, “but I propose to place the Carringtons in a position where they will have to admit that they are in the wrong, as you say they are. We will tell them that they may send a representative through our mine at any time, and that he will be accorded every courtesy.”
“Not on your life, we won’t!” said Richards, fiercely.
“That,” said Mr. Wade, serenely, “is a matter where we differ.”
“Do you suppose,” Richards went on, working himself into a rage, “that anyone they sent down would come up and tell the truth? He’d say just what he was paid to say, and he’d find just what he was paid to find.”
Joseph
