There entered the same clerk, having barely had time to knock.
“Mr Wyvern would like to see you, sir.”
“Wyvern? Certainly. In a minute or two. I’ll ring.”
The clerk retired. The “minute or two” was spent by Warren in carefully wrapping up the photograph again and replacing it in the drawer. Which done he banged the spring handbell on his table and waited.
“Why, Wyvern, my dear old chap, how are you? Glad to see you again—only wish I could be of more use to you though.”
He was wringing the other’s hand, and his tone was of the most cordial Warren knew how to play on the cordiality stop in a way to soothe the most suspicious, and Wyvern was not suspicious.
“Oh, I’m all right,” said the other, with a careless laugh, not altogether free from a note of despondency.
“By Jove! You look it too,” said Warren, taking in the tall, fine figure, and the clear-cut face with its hall-mark of breeding stamped large. The clear blue eyes, too, were those of a man in the pink of condition, and taking it all in he realised that with his own powers of attraction, which were undoubted, he himself would be nowhere beside this one, or, at any rate, not where he wanted to be—and the rest didn’t matter. “Well, now, what are the latest developments? They are going to foreclose, aren’t they?”
“Yes. It doesn’t matter much in the long run. I’ve got another scheme on hand now. I’m going to sell out and clear.”
“Eh? The deuce you are?” cried Warren, surprised out of his normal and impassive attitude. “Have a drink, old chap—then we can talk things over snugly. What’ll you have? Whisky or dop?”