She laughed easily. "Who said you had been doing anything, Mr. Hathaway?" she asked.
"The senator," he answered shortly, adding: "He told me I'd have to make my peace with you."
She had developed a sudden interest in the quaint Japanese figures on the ivory sticks of her fan. "You want something, Mr. Hathaway; what is it?" she inquired.
"I want to be put next in this pigs-in-clover railroad puzzle," was the blunt statement of the need. "Our freight contract with the Transcontinental is about to expire, and I'd like to get it renewed on the same terms as before."
"Well," she said ingenuously, "why don't you do it?"
"I can't," he blustered. "Everybody has suddenly grown mysterious or gone crazy—I don't know which. Kittredge, the general superintendent, don't seem to remember that we ever had any contract, and Gantry is just as bad. And when I go to the senator he tells me I must make my peace with you. I'm left out in the cold; I can't begin to sabe what the senator and these railroad brass-collar men are driving at. I've got something to sell; something that the railroad company needs. Where the d—— I mean, where's the hitch?"
The small person in the fetching party-gown reached up and pinched a leaf from a fragrant shrub fronting the settee.
"Mr. Gantry has gone to fetch me an ice, and he will be back in a very few minutes," she suggested mildly. "Consider your peace made, Mr. Hathaway, and tell me what I can do for you."
"You can put me next," said the lumber lord, going back to the only phrase that seemed to fit the exigencies of the case. "Why the—why can't we get our contract renewed?"