"He laughed when I asked him. I did. I telephoned him when you told me what was happening downtown. He hasn't even thought of revoking the trust. You see," she explained, "he made a trust fund of it and draws only the income. He said that people could make damned fools of themselves on the strength of a rumor, but that he was sure anything the Norquay family backed was as solid as Gibraltar."
"Well, you have there the key to why Grove shot himself, and to why my father died of grief as much as of the flu," he said quietly. "It may be a sinful pride, but by God it's a reality I have to abide by. If we go down, we go down with our flag flying."
"But we won't go down," she said cheerfully. She came and put her arms encouragingly about him. "We may lose materially, but there are precious things that can't be taken away from us. Only you'll have to be careful of yourself. You'll have to relax. You've been strung up for weeks, brooding over this mess. I don't like that. You mustn't. We'll play the cards we hold, and if we lose, why we'll have played without cheating. Eh? Smile, Roderick Dhu."
"You're a jewel," Rod whispered. "I won't brood any more. Won't have time. I'm going to get under way. May I have a man in to dinner if I can get hold of him?"
"Half a dozen, if you like," Mary smiled.
They went downstairs. Rod called a regimental headquarters at Hastings Park. He got some information there, and called another number. Yes, Mr. Hall was in. In another minute Rod had him on the wire. Yes, he could come out to the house.
In the broad mirror of Rod's imagination, as he sat waiting, there stood forth successive images of what he meant to accomplish and how. His mind had a faculty of projecting ways and means, not as skeleton ideas, but as extraordinarily vivid pictures of the actual proceeding. He meant to make Andy Hall a commanding officer, the chief of his labor staff. His program took form in flashes, glimpses of men, machinery, stretches of forest, booming grounds,—all energized, dynamic. There was a simplicity that he appreciated in such an undertaking. It was not a matter of finessing, of juggling with pawns and tokens on the commercial chessboard. It was not an affair or stratagems and artifice and cunning. It was honest productive effort, men and machinery moving purposefully under a directing force to supply human needs. He liked that aspect of what he meant to do.
Hall was ushered in by Yick Sing. He was in civilian clothes, a small bronze button in his left lapel. Rod led him upstairs to Mary's den.
"How long since you were demobbed?"
"About two weeks," Hall answered.