"He's a new-comer—comparatively; somebody at the club said he gave himself out for a lumberman from Louisiana."
Griswold was nodding slowly. "His name?" he asked.
"I can't remember. It's an odd name; Boffin, or Giffin, or something like that. They're beginning to say now that he isn't a lumberman at all—just why, I don't know."
Griswold's right hand stole softly to his hip pocket. The touch was reassuring. But a little while after, when he was leaving the dining-room with Raymer, he dropped behind and made a quick transfer of something from the hip pocket to the side pocket of his coat. His hand was still in the coat pocket when he parted from the young iron-founder on the sidewalk.
"You'll be going home, I suppose?" he said.
Raymer made a wry face.
"Yes; and I wish to gracious you were the one who had to face my mother and sister. They're all for peace, you know—peace at any old price."
Griswold laughed.
"Tell them we're going to have peace if we are obliged to fight for it. And don't let them swing you. If we back down now we may as well go into court and ask for a receiver. Good-night."
Though he had not betrayed it, Griswold was fiercely impatient to get away. One tremendous question had been dominating all others from the earliest moment of the morning awakening, and all day long it had fed upon doubtings and uncertainty. Would Andrew Galbraith recover from the effects of the drowning accident? At first, he thought he would go to his room and telephone to Margery. But before he had reached the foot of Shawnee Street he had changed his mind. What he wanted to say could scarcely be trusted to the wires.