“I didn’t inquire. She asked me to find you and deliver her message. I have done both.”
“I can’t go just now; I’m, busy.”
“Then I’ll wait for you,” said Oswald coolly, and he sat down on Plegg’s bunk, found a cigarette in his pocket case and lighted it.
In sheer perversity, as it seemed to the young lawyer, David went on shuffling the blue-prints and making figures on a pad under his hand. Oswald waited in silence and in due time had his reward.
“Be half-way decent about it, Bert, and tell me what I’m wanted for,” said the figure-maker, looking up suddenly from his work. “She has Cumberleigh and Wishart; aren’t they enough?”
Oswald’s smile was a palpable easing of strains. If David’s malady were nothing worse than a fit of jealousy, it was not necessarily incurable.
“I was wondering, before I came out here, what Vinnie might be doing to you,” he said. “You wrote us that she and her father were here, if you remember.”
“What she did to me was done more than a year ago, if you care to know. But you haven’t answered my question. What does she want of me this morning?”
“Honestly, I don’t know, David.”
“Where did you see her?”