“But I——”
“But you want to get out of this p’ticular hornet’s nest, I s’pose, without giving too life-like an imitation of a man shinning down from a tree, eh? Well, I guess that can be fixed. Sit down. We’ll——”
“You’re mistaken!” broke in Standish, resenting the more civil tone of his host as he had not resented his former rudeness, “I’m in this fight to stay. I——”
“Want your cash losses made good! If you——”
“Mr. Conover,” said Clive calmly, though the knuckles that gripped the table-edge were white with pressure, “when your lackey, Shevlin, made that same proposition to me, he thought he was making a perfectly straight offer. And, judging by the standards you’ve taught him, I suppose the suggestion was almost holy compared with the majority of his tactics. So I didn’t thrash him. He knew no better; for the same reason I don’t thrash you.”
“That and maybe a few others,” laughed Conover, in no wise offended. “I climbed up from yard-boy to railroad president by frequently jamming my fists in where they’d do the most good. I guess you’d have a faint s’spicion you’d been in a fight before you was through. But I presume you didn’t come here to-night to give an encore performance of your grand-stand play at Grafton. It seems I started on the wrong idea just now. You don’t want to drop out gracefully or to sell out, and you prefer the soothing attentions of the hornets to——”
“Yes, if you put it that way, Mr. Conover——”
“Hold on a second.”
The Railroader crossed to a screen at the farther end of the room. Thrusting it aside he said to a stenographer who sat behind it, pencil and pad in hand:
“We won’t need you any longer. This ain’t going to be that kind of interview after all. You can go now. Just a little precaution of mine,” he added to Clive as he returned to the table. “Now you can go on talking.”