In the corridor, Westervelt said to his secretary, "I think I'll work over the matter at home. I'm not so sick as they seem to imagine. Jump into a cab and drive up to my house, and give the package to my wife. Tell her to take care of it."
When Fosdick saw him empty-handed, he was instantly ablaze. "Has that scoundrel——"
"No, no," explained his old friend, "I got the books, all right."
"Where are they?"
"I sent them uptown—up to my house."
"What the hell did you do that for?" cried Fosdick.
"I thought it best to have them where I could personally take care of them," said Westervelt, his heart bounding with delight. For Fosdick's unguarded tone had set flaming in him that suspicion which thoroughly respectable men always have latent for each other, in circles where respectability rests entirely upon deeds that in the less respectable or on a less magnificent scale would seem quite the reverse of respectable. They know how dear reputation is, how great sacrifices of friendship and honor even the most honorable and generous men will make to safeguard it.
"Well, well," said Fosdick, heaving but oily of surface, and not daring to pursue the subject lest Westervelt should suspect him. "You sent them by safe hands?"
"By my secretary, and to my wife," said Westervelt.
They kept up a rather strained conversation for half an hour, chiefly devoted to abuse of Armstrong—Westervelt's abuse was curiously lacking in heartiness, though Fosdick was too busy with his own thoughts to note it. He suddenly interrupted himself to say: "Oh, I forgot. Excuse me a moment." And he went into the next room. He was gone three quarters of an hour. When he came back, he said, with not very convincing carelessness, "While I was out there talking with Waller, it occurred to me that, on the whole, the books'd be safer in my vaults. So I took the liberty of sending him up to get them. Your wife knows him."