XIX
TWO TELEPHONE TALKS
As Armstrong, at Fosdick's house, was waiting in a small reception room just off the front hall, he heard the old man on the stairs, storming as he descended. "It's a conspiracy," he was shouting. "You all want to kill me. You've heard the doctor say I'll die if I don't stop driving, and walk. Yet, there's that damned carriage always at the door. I can't step out that it isn't waiting for me, and you know I can't resist if I see it. It's murder, that's what it is."
"Shall I send the carriage away, sir?" Armstrong heard the butler say.
"No!" cried Fosdick, rapping the floor with his cane. "No! You know I won't send it away. I've got to get some air, and it seems to me I can't walk."
By this time he was at the door of the reception room. "Good morning, Armstrong," he said with surly politeness. "I'm sick to-day. I suppose you heard me talking to this butler here. I tell you, things to drive in are the ruin of the prosperous classes. Sell that damn motor of yours. Never take a cab, if you can help it. They're killing me with that carriage of mine. Yes—and there's that infernal cook—chef, as they call him. He's trying to earn his salary, and he's killing me doing it. I eat the poison stuff—I can't get anything else. No wonder I have indigestion and gout. No wonder my head feels as if it was on fire every morning. And my temper—I used to have a good disposition. I'm getting to be a devil. It's a conspiracy to murder me." There Fosdick noted Armstrong's expression. He dropped his private woes abruptly and said, with his wonted suavity, "But what can I do for you to-day?"
"I came to ask you to do an act of justice," replied the Westerner, looking even huger and more powerful than usual, in contrast with the other, whom age and self-indulgence were rapidly shriveling.
Armstrong's calm was aggressive, would better have become a dictator than a suitor. It was highly offensive to Fosdick, who was rapidly reaching the state of mind in which obsequiousness alone is tolerable and manliness seems insolence. But he reined in his temper and said, smoothly enough, "You can always count on me to do justice."
"I want you to give me a letter, explaining that those three hundred and fifty thousand dollars were drawn by me and paid over, at your order."
Fosdick stared blankly at him. "What three hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"