CHAPTER IX
SANTA YSOBEL
Of all unexpected things. I went down to Santa Ysobel with Worth Gilbert. It happened this way: Cummings, one of those individuals on whose tombstone may truthfully be put, "Born a man—and died a lawyer," seemed rather taken aback at the effect of the blow he'd launched. If he was after information, I can't think he learned much in the moment while Worth stood regarding him with an unreadable eye.
There was only a little grimmer tightening of the jaw muscle, something bleak and robbed in the glance of the eye; the face of one, it seemed to me, who grieved the more because he was denied real sorrow for his loss, and Worth had tramped to the window and stood with his back to us, putting the thing over in his silent, fighting fashion, speaking to none of us. It was when Barbara followed, took hold of his sleeve and began half whispering up into his face that Cummings jerked his hat from the table where he had thrown it, and snapped,
"Boyne—can I have a few minutes of your time?"
"Jerry," Worth's voice halted me at the door, "Leave that card—an order—for me. For the suitcase."
Cummings was ahead of me, and he turned back to listen, but I crowded him along and was pretty hot when I faced him in the outer office to demand,
"What kind of a deal do you call this—ripping in here to throw this thing at the boy in such a way? What is your idea? What you trying to put over?"