“Have you talked with Mr. McGowan?”
“I can’t tell you,” she answered, quickly checking the look of surprise that leaped into her eyes at the unexpected question.
“I don’t know just how far Mr. McGowan’s information may have led him into this matter, but I have feared all along that he is not half so ignorant as he appears. Come in here, Bets,” he requested, pushing open a door to an inner office. “I have some things I want to show you.”
“Mercy, Bud! How mysterious you can be!”
“An ounce of precaution is worth a pound of lawsuits, and I don’t want the slightest possibility of a leak,” he said as he locked the door.
“My sakes! I had no idea you could be so serious. Is this the way you act with all 319 your clients? I’d think you’d frighten them all away. You almost do me. It reminds me of the way you would lock me up in the hall closet to scare me when we were children.”
“For once in my life I am serious, Sis. We are no longer children, and this is far from play. I wish to God it were nothing more than that!”
“Why, Harold!”
“Bets, you’ve got a close tongue and loads of good sense. I’ve carried this thing just about as long as I can without breaking under it. I’ve got to let off steam. You know I’ve tried to be on the square since my little fling, and even then I was straight, but Dad has never believed it. I’m tempted now to go wrong, and–––”
“Why on earth are you talking like this? Has some one been accusing you of doing wrong? Oh, Harold! You didn’t fall into trouble after all over in Australia, did you?”