I didn’t say anything.
“You know, Lam, I’m trusting very much to your discretion in this matter. I’m certainly hoping that you don’t — that you haven’t — that no excess zeal on your part has perhaps laid a foundation for a worse evil than that which you were called in to cure.”
“That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”
“Very. You don’t open up much, do you?”
“I prefer to play a lone hand wherever I can.”
He said, “I could have unlimited confidence in you, Donald, my boy, absolutely unlimited confidence, if I knew one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Whether your plans had taken into consideration the danger of that ten-thousand-dollar check showing up.”
It was a chance for a grandstand that I couldn’t resist. I said quietly, “Mr. Ashbury, I burnt up that ten-thousand-dollar check in your solarium last night. I ground the ashes into powder with my finger-tips. You can quit worrying about it.”
He looked at me with his eyes getting bigger and bigger until I thought they were going to push his spectacles off the bridge of his nose, then he grabbed my hand and started pumping it up and down. I made allowances for the four cocktails, but, even so, it was quite a demonstration. “You’re a wonder, my boy, a wonder! This is the last time I shall ask you anything. You go right ahead from here on and handle things in your own way. That’s marvellous, simply marvellous.”