“Take it easy, old man,” said Maxwell soothingly; “and remember that as yet I’m only groping around the edges. What is it that Dimmock has done to you?”
“Heavens and earth! don’t you see? For Diana’s sake I’ve monkeyed and schemed and side-stepped on this receivership business until I’ve got it in shape to pull you out without pulling her uncle in. But to do that, I’ve put Dimmock, her step-father, so deep in the hole that a yoke of oxen couldn’t haul him out! He knows it, too; and that was the reason for that bit of by-play just now at the luncheon-table. He was saying to me in just so many words, ‘Now you know who you’re hitting; go ahead, if you dare!’”
“And, naturally, since Miss Carswell is the one altogether lovely, you don’t dare. I can’t blame you, Calvin. Drop it, and we’ll do the best we can without you.”
Sprague was walking the floor of the little writing-room with his big hands jammed deep in the pockets of his short business coat. Suddenly he stopped and smacked a huge fist into a hollowed palm.
“By George, Dick, we’ll do it yet!” he broke out. “I’ll beat him at his own game—come on!” And again seizing the railroad man’s arm, he dragged him out of the hotel and almost flung him into the nearest waiting taxicab.
The order to the cab-driver ran to the Brewster National Bank; and two minutes later Sprague, with Maxwell at his heels, shouldered his way through a group of waiting customers to the president’s room. Gray old David Kinzie was at his desk, and he nodded toward a door in the opposite wall of the business office leading to the isolated directors’ room. “Stillings and Hunniwell are in there,” he said, “and Starbuck has gone after the culprit.”
“And the other man?” queried Sprague sharply.
“He didn’t want to come, but he will. He thinks it is a conference to discuss the bank’s attitude, and he doesn’t want to commit himself. I convinced him that he’d better come.”
Again Sprague led the way, pausing at the inner door, however, to push Maxwell in ahead of him. The two lawyers were sitting opposite each other at the far end of the long committee table which filled the centre of the room; and their greetings to the new-comers were wordless. Maxwell had scarcely taken the chair next to Stillings when the door opened again, this time to admit a stoop-shouldered, thin-haired man whose face was even grayer than Banker Kinzie’s. This last arrival was Judge Watson, and when he saw Sprague and Maxwell he would have withdrawn, only Starbuck was behind him to make it impossible.
As before, the greetings were merely nodded; and a silence that could be felt settled down upon the room. It was the judge who broke it first.