For the first time Enoch Crane was beginning to feel how helpless he was to protect a child he loved. After all, what had he accomplished? Denounced a scoundrel in his club, denounced him before his intimate friends, threatened him with what? Then the scandal in the newspapers. Even that had turned out well for the man he despised. “Good God!” he kept murmuring to himself. “What next?”
He sat there white, livid, the muscles of his jaw working, sat there beating a tattoo on the arm of his chair with both hands, a savage gleam in his eyes.
Suddenly he leaped out of his chair and rang for Moses, and presently that servant appeared.
“Yas, Marser Crane,” said Moses, poking his gray woolly head in the door.
“Tell Mr. Ford I should like to see him at once,” said Enoch, so sharply that Moses opened the whites of his eyes wide. “Tell him I wish to see him immediately,” declared Enoch again.
“’Spec’ somethin’s gone wrong with you, Marser Crane,” ventured Moses gently.
“Wrong!” Enoch shouted. “Wrong! Nothing’s gone right in this house since Ford entered.”
“Dat’s suttenly de truth, Marser,” agreed Moses. “What’s a been a-goin’ along ain’t suttenly gone right—I seen it frum de fust; ever since he moved in.”
“You will go down at once, Moses, and tell him I wish to see him.”
“I’se on my way,” smiled Moses. “I’ll tell him what you done said to me—’meadiately—dat you won’t take no for an answer. Dat’s it—’meadiately.”