“I want you to know I can be as calm as anybody when there’s anything to be calm about,” retorted Ducky with some acerbity. “It isn’t so much the money—not but what I could use that to buy food with—but those fellows are not doing me right.”
“There’s our one best chance,” said Neighbor, more seriously than was his wont. “They’re doing wrong. Doing right is as easy as sticking a needle in the eye of a camel; but to do wrong takes a steady, dead lift. Every tendency and every fact pulls against it like the force of gravity at four P. M. I’m not particularly bitter against my own dear little sins, but I do believe that, in the long run, the way of the transgressor is really hard.”
There came a tap at the door; Mr. Jones was wanted at the phone.
“Hello! This is Baca!” the telephone said; and could Mr. Jones step up to the house? It thought that matters might be arranged. “Immediatamente!” said Mr. Jones, and hung up.
“Now, Ducky,” he counseled, as they walked uptown, “you notice close, and I’ll show you some diplomacy. I’ll make Baca commit himself so deep that it will amount to a full confession. You still don’t quite believe what you think. When I am done with him you’ll have no doubts. That’s your great trouble, son—you don’t think hard enough. You don’t concentrate. You will not give to the matter in hand the full impact of your mind. You think straight enough but you haven’t got the punch.”
Baca lifted a sarcastic eyebrow at Ducky’s presence and bent a questioning look on Neighbor Jones, but showed them into the curtained room of the previous night’s conference. Refreshments were offered and declined.
“Well, Mr. Jones, if you are still of the same mind to-morrow morning at ten o’clock your mortgage will be released to you on the terms you mentioned.”
Neighbor wore a shamefaced look. He twiddled with his hat.
“Maybe I didn’t do just right about that, Mr. Baca. I only wanted to draw you.” He looked up and smiled. “You see, we knew all the time that you fellows had Drake’s money,” he said chattily. “My proposition was to make you tip your hand—to convince Mr. Ducky that my reasoning was strictly O. K., if not logical.”