shoulder. "It's like you to give up so much of your time to me and my
foolishness and be so frank with me. And I know it's mighty rough on
you to have to be a mere machine instead of Jim Stacy. Don't you bother
about me. I'll sell some of my Wide West Extension and pull the thing
through myself. It's all right, but I'm sorry for you, old chap." He
glanced around the room at the walls and rich paneling, and added, "I
suppose that's what you have to pay for all this sort of thing?"
Before Stacy could reply, a waiting visitor was announced for the second
time, and Barker, with another hand-shake and a reassuring smile to his
old partner, passed into the hall, as if the onus of any infelicity in
the interview was upon himself alone. But Stacy did not seem to be in a
particularly accessible mood to the new caller, who in his turn appeared
to be slightly irritated by having been kept waiting over some irksome
business. "You don't seem to follow me," he said to Stacy after reciting
his business perplexity. "Can't you suggest something?"
"Well, why don't you get hold of one of your board of directors?"
said Stacy abstractedly. "There's Captain Drummond; you and he are old
friends. You were comrades in the Mexican War, weren't you?"
"That be d----d!" said his visitor bitterly. "All his interests are
the other way, and in a trade of this kind, you know, Stacy, that a man
would sacrifice his own brother. Do you suppose that he'd let up on a
sure thing that he's got just because he and I fought side by side at
Cerro Gordo? Come! what are you giving us? You're the last man I ever
expected to hear that kind of flapdoodle from. If it's because your bank
has got some other interest and you can't advise me, why don't you say
so?" Nevertheless, in spite of Stacy's abrupt disclaimer, he left a few
minutes later, half convinced that Stacy's lukewarmness was due to some
adverse influence. Other callers were almost as quickly disposed of, and
at the end of an hour Stacy found himself again alone.
|