“Ah, you young men!” he said placidly. “How much vital energy you waste in worry! You prance about, tear your hair, and get hot and unpleasantly moist; and what do you gain by making yourself uncomfortable? Nothing. Spreckles will come because he said he would, and I have never known him to break his word. There are such an infinite number of reasons why he should be late that it is useless to speculate. Take my advice and make yourself comfortable until he appears.”
He folded his plump hands and gazed meditatively at the ceiling.
“I know it’s absurd,” Meyer replied, with a harassed smile; “but I can’t help it. Besides, I have so much more at stake than you. In comparison to all the other irons you have in the fire, your interest in the diamond trade is insignificant. But should this monstrous, incredible thing prove true, I shall be ruined—totally ruined.”
Philander Morgan withdrew his eyes from the ceiling and puffed out his fat cheeks.
“Tut! tut!” he protested. “Don’t speak of it. Surely you have not allowed yourself to credit for an instant this wild rumor. It’s absurd—impossible.”
The Hebrew tapped nervously with his finger nail on the polished surface of the table.
“That’s what I told myself at first,” he said slowly. “I snapped my fingers at them—I laughed. It was inconceivable, beyond the bounds of reason. But later, every evidence seemed to point——”
A loud knock sounded at the door and he broke off abruptly.
“Come in!” he cried, springing to his feet.
The door slowly opened and an old man appeared on the threshold. He was very tall and very thin, with narrow, drooping shoulders and a slow, almost shambling step. His clothes were mussed and almost threadbare; but, in spite of that, it needed no more than a glance at the wrinkled face, the great mane of snow white hair brushed straight back from a high, broad forehead, the piercing eyes, bright as live coals, gleaming through big spectacles with rims of tortoise shell, to tell that he was somebody.