David winced. He knew perfectly well that the excuse given had been only an excuse; that the intruding farmer was merely one of the badly frightened depositors in the Middleboro Security who was afraid to wait for another day. He was wondering how much or how little his father had told Grillage of the threatened disaster when the big man went on.
“There is something the matter with your father, David. All evening he’s been acting like a man with a clot on his brain. Hasn’t been sick, has he?”
This was one question that the son could answer without reservations: “No; he hasn’t been side.”
“Humph! Then it’s business. How long have you been home, and how much do you know about his banking affairs?”
“I’ve been here only one day, but I know all there is to know, I guess,” said David, looking down at the worn pattern of the linoleum on the lobby floor.
The head of the Grillage Engineering Company twisted himself in his chair and bored into the young man at his side with the masterful eyes.
“Huh! Been here only one day, and yet you know it all. That means that he’s up against it. I knew it; it was bound to come sooner or later. Anywhere else but in Middleboro he would have gone on the rocks years ago; I’ve always told him that. Shake it loose, young man, and give me the facts.”
David hesitated in some manly fashion. If his father had not seen fit to confide in the tried friend of his youth, it was not for the son to take matters into his own hands.
“I don’t know that I have a right to do that, Mr. Grillage,” he began. “I——”
“See here!” was the explosive interruption; “if you knew me a little better, you wouldn’t make a break like that. When I ask a man to loosen up, he loosens, and that’s all there is to it. Dump it out—all of it.”