When he heard a voice come scratching over the wires, he felt sure that he had guessed right. Quite often his foster father's creditors talked in that same excited, hurried way. It was rather necessary to be hurried and excited if a claim were to be met before the dwindling financial resources were exhausted. But the words themselves, however—as soon as they gave their interpretation in his brain—threw a different light on the matter.
"How do you do, Mr. Duncan," the voice answered. "Pardon me if I got you up. I want to talk to your son, Bruce."
Bruce emitted a little gasp of amazement. Whoever talked at the end of the line obviously didn't know that the elder Duncan was dead. Bruce had a moment of grim humor in which he mused that this voice would have done rather well if it could arouse his foster father to answer it. "The elder Mr. Duncan died last month," he answered simply. There was not the slightest trace of emotion in his tone. No wayfarer on the street could have been, as far as facts went, more of a stranger to him; there was no sense of loss at his death and no cause for pretense now. "This is Bruce speaking."
He heard the other gasp. "Old man, I'm sorry," his contrite voice came. "I didn't know of your loss. This is Barney—Barney Wegan—and I just got in from the West. Haven't had a bit of news for months. Accept my earnest sympathies—"
"Barney! Of course." The delight grew on Bruce's face; for Barney Wegan, a man whom he had met and learned to know on the gym floor of his club, was quite near to being a real friend. "And what's up, Barney?"
The man's voice changed at once—went back to its same urgent, but rather embarrassed tone. "You won't believe me if I tell you, so I won't try to tell you over the 'phone. But I must come up—right away. May I?"
"Of course—"
"I'll jump in my car and be there in a minute."
Bruce hung up, slowly descended to his library, and flashed on the lights.
For the first time he was revealed plainly. His was a familiar type; but at the same time the best type too. He had the face and the body of an athlete, a man who keeps himself fit; and there was nothing mawkish or effeminate about him. His dark hair was clipped close about his temples, and even two hours in bed had not disarranged its careful part. It is true that men did look twice at Bruce's eyes, set in a brown, clean-cut face, never knowing exactly why they did so. They had startling potentialities. They were quite clear now, wide-awake and cool, yet they had a strange depth of expression and shadow that might mean, somewhere beneath the bland and cool exterior, a capacity for great emotions and passions.