"And we're out our expenses in getting ready for trial."
"Well—you'll send Ganser a heavy bill."
Beck shook his head dismally. "That's the worst of it. He called me a swindler, said he'd show that you and I were in a conspiracy, and dared me to send him a bill. And in the circumstances I don't think I will."
Loeb gave Beck a long and searching look which Beck bore without flinching.
"No, I don't think you will send him a bill," said Loeb slowly. "But how much did he pay you?"
"Not a cent—nothing but insults."
Loeb finished his luncheon in silence. But he and Beck separated on the friendliest terms. Loeb was too practical a philosopher to hate another man for doing that which he would have done himself if he had had the chance. At his office he told a clerk to send Feuerstein a note, asking him to call the next morning. When Feuerstein came into the anteroom the gimlet-eyed office boy disappeared through one of the doors in the partition and reappeared after a longer absence than usual. He looked at Feuerstein with a cynical, contemptuous smile in his eyes.
"Mr. Loeb asks me to tell you," he said, "with his compliments, that you are a bigamist and a swindler, and that if you ever show your face here again he'll have you locked up."
Feuerstein staggered and paled—there was no staginess in his manner. Then without a word he slunk away. He had not gone far up Center Street before a hand was laid upon his shoulder from behind. He stopped as if he had been shot; he shivered; he slowly, and with a look of fascinated horror, turned to see whose hand had arrested him.
He was looking into the laughing face of a man who was obviously a detective.