“Oh, don’t let’s say ‘incriminate’; let’s use the milder word, ‘inculpate’. Yes, I guess they did, Dick.”
“Now I’ve got you!” snapped the square-shouldered one at the desk. “You would never—never in this wide world—have let that evidence get out. You know you wouldn’t!”
The big man was grinning affably. “You’re only half right,” he rejoined. “Up to luncheon-time to-day I meant to do it; I had it framed up so that the uncle, who is really the high spellbinder of the entire push, could slip out and the whole load would come down on Mr. Dimmock’s shoulders. But that luncheon play queered me, and I had to think quick to invent a new way out. It worked, and that’s all there is to it; all but one little item—Miss Diana let me drive her out to Lake Topaz this afternoon, and I stole your car to do it.”
“No; there is one other little item,” said Maxwell, rising and closing his desk upon the evening’s work. “I wired Ford, as you know, and I gave you the credit that belonged to you—which you may not know. Our New York crowd is properly grateful, and they promptly wired Kinzie. I don’t know how you’re fixed, Calvin, but I guess this won’t come amiss if you’re going to try to marry Diana Carswell,” and he handed Sprague a slip of paper which bore Banker Kinzie’s promise to pay ten thousand dollars to the order of one Calvin Sprague.
Sprague took the draft, glanced at the figure of it, and handed it back with another of his deep-chested laughs.
“Where on top of earth did you get the idea that I needed money, Dick?” he asked. “Why, Lord love you! didn’t you know that my California uncle, Uncle William, died five years ago and left me more money than I know what to do with? It’s the solemn fact, and I’m working on the Government job purely and simply because I don’t know how to loaf comfortably—never did. Of course, I can’t quite match up with the Carswell millions; but if that were the only thing in the way——”
“What is the other thing?” demanded Maxwell, in mock solicitude.
Sprague had risen and was stretching his arms over his head and yawning sleepily.
“If you’d see me step on the scales, you wouldn’t ask. I’m such a whale of a man, Dick! And, say: did you notice her at table to-day? ‘Pretty,’ you’d say, but that isn’t the word; it’s ‘dainty’, dainty in every look and move and touch. Imagine a girl like that saying, ‘Yes, honey,’ to a great big overgrown stale foot-ball artist like me! Let’s go over to the house and smoke a bedtime. Nobody loves me, and I’m going out in the garden to eat——”
“That is what makes you so frightfully fat—you eat too many of the fuzzy kind,” laughed the snappy little superintendent unsympathetically. And then he flicked the switch of the office lights and they went out together into the calm September night.