"I will not be insulted."
"I demand a retraction."
"Anybody who says I'm a thief is a damned liar!" Etc., etc.
Rod sat back, an onlooker at this minor Bedlam. He was an outsider, and looking in from the outside it made him, figuratively speaking, just a little bit sick. If this sort of thing was the accompaniment of big business and finance when it fell on evil days—He felt a mild sort of disgust with these yammering old men. He perceived that most of them were intent only on saving their financial hides. That they were callously indifferent to what happened, so long as it did not happen to them.
He marked also that Richston manifested no resentment at his father's personal thrust. Deane muttered to himself. His face was flushed. Richston only sneered, leaning back in his chair. Of them all John P. Wall remained unperturbed, his hands folded over his abdomen, blandly inert. And Norquay senior rested his finger tips on the table and looked at the sputtering, the gesticulations, the commotion he had aroused.
They subsided into mutterings. All but Burrows. He rose on his stodgy legs.
"I shall not remain here to be insulted," he announced with a ludicrous simulation of dignity.
"Sit down," Norquay senior's voice popped like a whiplash. And Burrows, after an uncertain glance about him for moral support, resumed his chair.
"I have not finished," Rod's father continued. "I am not going to reason with you. I am going to talk to you in the only language such men as you can understand, and be moved by. It is nothing to you that a thousand innocent people may be partially or wholly ruined by your manipulations. But it happens that my name is involved in this as well as my son and my money. I tell you flatly that if you proceed to sink this financial galleon which you built and launched and sailed on profitable voyages, and now propose to scuttle since there is no more chance for loot—I tell you if you do this, that three of you sitting at this table face the penitentiary. And, by God, I'll see that you go there!"
He stopped. A chilly silence, in which Rod could hear the sharp intake and slow exhalation of breath, seemed to hold them all fast.