"Now, see here, Copley! If you persist in disregarding my wishes let me tell you what will happen; I will throw Billy Graham out of his job and I'll use every scrap of influence I possess to keep him from getting another! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!" The notebook slapped on his knee. "Ruin your own prospects if you're fool enough to do it; ruin Sheila's, if she's fool enough to let you; but stop there! Maybe she'll help you to stop when she knows that your stubbornness and hers will be a knife in her father's back! She will know, too, for you can't go ahead in common decency without telling her what it will mean to him!" The tanner leaned forward, an ugly light of triumph in his eyes, raised his free hand and slowly clenched his fist. "I've got—you—right—there!"
"Father!" The bitterest shame in the world, the shame of a son for his father, was in that cry. The young man rose from his chair and stood looking at Simon Varr almost incredulously. "You couldn't do that! You couldn't do anything so contemptible! Do what you please to me, but take back that threat before I—I despise you!"
"Despise me? You! Ha! I'll take back nothing, and I'll use my advantage to its full extent. Mark that! I've said you shan't marry Sheila Graham—and what I say goes!"
"Not any longer with me!" flared his son at white heat. For a full minute they indulged in a furious exchange of half-incoherent insults before Copley's voice rose clear above his father's. "I will marry Sheila as soon as she'll have me, and I warn you to keep your hands off Graham!"
It was then that the study door was flung open and a thick, heavy voice cut through their abusive volleys.
"That will do, young man! I can fight my own battles with no help from you!"
Graham came into the study, dragging with him the shrinking figure of the clerk, Langhorn. His intrusion was startling enough, but there was still a deeper significance in the slight lurch that the manager gave as he halted, glowering, before Simon Varr. His flushed face and blurred utterance contributed their testimony to a fact that was ominous in itself; he had been drinking, drinking heavily, though he was notably abstemious by habit. Varr got hastily to his feet, so threatening was his manager's attitude.
"What do you want here?" he demanded curtly, though he knew well enough what Langhorn's presence betokened. "What do you mean by bursting in like that? Are you drunk?"
Possibly the crisp question went far to sober Graham, who was plainly trying to shake off the effect of his potations as if the sense of the undignified figure he was cutting was just beginning to filter into his confused brain. He straightened up, steadied himself.
"I want a talk with you, Mr. Varr. It's overdue, I think. I've been waiting for you to make a move in a certain direction, and it seems I've been fooling myself nicely." He spoke slowly. "More than a score of years I've worked for you, Mr. Varr, and not you nor any man can say I haven't done well by you and the business. I'm entitled to something more than the salary of a hired hand—Mr. Bolt agrees with me there—and I've been hoping that you would give me some chance to invest my savings in a business I've grown up with. I've earned the right—"