"What do you sit there, spouting all that preachment at me for? I know it as well or better than you; didn't I find the thing out and tell you how it stood? What do you suppose I did that for? To hear you spit it all out again?"
"What did you do it for?" Haxon eyed him sullenly.
"To get your help—you are a partner in the biz; you had a right to know."
Haxon looked as if he esteemed it a right with which he would willingly have dispensed.
"You've got my nerve all tore up," he complained.
"That ain't the question—what are we goin' to do about it?"
Haxon, as he still sat facing the back of the chair, took the ends of his pockets in the tips of his fingers and held them out to their extreme limits.
"What can we do—nothing!"
Lloyd looked balked and despairing. He had hoped so much, waited so long, with such torturing silence and self-repression for this appeal for the help of his friend and partner. He gazed dubiously at the attitude and face, all illustrative of the idea of absolute collapse, and then he slowly and laboriously gathered himself together. He felt like a pugilist, who, lunging with great force, has caught a heavy fall in the ring. He was game, however, game to the last.
"Well, I don't throw up the sponge," he said at length. "That's a trick I've never learned. We can do something! You watch me right close and keep a shut mouth, and sit tight, and you'll see something doing."