XXXVI
THE GRAY WOLF
As it chanced, Jasper Grierson was in the act of concluding a long and apparently satisfactory telephone conversation with his agent in Duluth at the moment when the door of his private room opened and his daughter entered.
As on a former occasion, she went to sit in the window until the way to free speech should be open, and she could not well help hearing the closing words of the long-distance conference.
"You sit tight in the boat; that's all you've got to do," her father was saying. "Keep the young fellow with you as long as you can; the other man is too sick to talk business, right now. When you can't hold the young one any longer, let me know. We'll play the hand out as it lays. Get that? I say, we'll play the hand out as it lays."
He had hung the receiver on its hook and was pushing the bracketted telephone-set aside when Margery crossed the room swiftly and placed an envelope, the counterpart of the one left with Raymer, on the desk.
"There is your notice to quit," she said calmly. "You threw me down and gave me the double-cross the other day, and now I've come back at you."
Another man might have hastened to meet the crisis. But the gray wolf was of a different mettle. He let the envelope lie untouched until after he had pulled out a drawer in the desk, found his box of cigars, and had leisurely selected and lighted one of the fat black monstrosities. When he tore the envelope across, the photographic print fell out, and he studied it carefully for many seconds before he read the accompanying documents. For a little time after he had tossed the papers aside there was a silence that bit. Then he said, slowly:
"So that's your raise, is it? Where does the game stand, right now?"