“Tell him, in unequivocal terms, to go hang.”
For a few moments Philip said nothing. He sat watching the smoke wreaths from his pipe curling up in blue circles upon the clear mountain air, a puzzled and helpless expression clouding his features. Then at last:
“I say, Fordham.”
“Well?”
“I wish—er—I wish, old chap, you’d pull me through this affair. I mean—er—I wish you’d interview old Glover for me. You’re so cool-headed, and I—well, I get in a rage and lose my nut. Why, this morning the old sinner and I were as nearly as possible coming to fisticuffs. We shouted at and damned each other, but what we said I haven’t the faintest recollection.”
“I don’t care to undertake anything of the kind, Phil, and so I tell you candidly,” answered Fordham.
“Why not, old chap?” was the doleful rejoinder.
“Because it is dead in the teeth of every ruling principle of my life to poke my nose into what doesn’t concern me. You may say I have already done so in advising you at all. So I have, and to that extent I plead guilty to having been inconsistent. But two wrongs don’t make a right, which we may take to mean that I don’t see why I should violate my principles still further. Were I to undertake what you want me to, old Glover would begin by asking what the devil business it was of mine, anyhow. And the worst of it is, he would be right—quite right.”
“Not of necessity,” rejoined Philip, eagerly. “Surely you have a right to act for a friend; and for all he knows you may be my legal adviser. I believe you must have been a lawyer once, you’re so devilish coldblooded and logical. Now, say you’ll do it.”
Fordham’s dark brows met, and he smoked silently for a few minutes. “Coldblooded—logical,” had said this careless youngster, who was merely paltering with the very outskirts of the grim web of circumstances which go to make up the tragedies—and travesties—of the serious side of life. “Coldblooded” was he now pronounced; yet could he remember when his blood ran hot, surging and seething like the boiling and bubbling pitch. Now it lay still within his veins, cool and acrid as vinegar.