“Thanks,” said Gallatin dryly. He picked a large envelope up from the table and handed it to his visitor. “I have already done so. Will you take it with you or shall I mail it?”
“I—you may give it to me, Mr. Gallatin.”
Gallatin walked to the outer door and politely bowed him out, while Tooker, his thin frame writhing with ecstasy, fussed with some papers on the big table in the junior partner’s office until he was more composed, and then went on about his daily routine. He realized now for the first time the full stature of the junior partner. In a night, it almost seemed to Tooker, he had outgrown his boyhood, his brilliant wayward boyhood that had promised so much and achieved so little. He was like his father now, but there was a difference. Philip Gallatin, the elder, he remembered, had dominated his office by the mere force of his intellect. He had directed the preparation of his cases with an unerring legal sense and he had won them through his mastery of detail and the elimination of the unessential. But it was when presenting his case to a jury that he was at his strongest, for such was the personal quality of his magnetism that jurors were willing to be convinced less by the value of his cause than by the magic of his sophistry. But to Tooker, who was little more than a piece of legal machinery, there was something in the methods of the son which compensated for the more spectacular talents of the father, the painstaking and diligent way in which Gallatin had planned and carried out his present investigations and the confidence with which he was putting his information to use. It was clear to Tooker that Leuppold had been unprepared for Philip Gallatin’s revelations. Even now Tooker doubted the wisdom of them, for Mr. Leuppold would not be slow to take advantage of his information and to cover the traces left by his clients as well as he might. But when he spoke of it to Gallatin, the junior partner had laughed.
“Don’t you bother, old man. Wait a while. We’ll hear from Mr. Leuppold very soon—before the week is out, I think.”
In the offices upstairs, Mr. Leuppold’s return was the signal for an immediate consultation of the entire firm, which would have flattered and encouraged Philip Gallatin had he been aware of it. Mr. Tyson and Mr. Whitehead discovered in Mr. Leuppold’s account of the interview undue cause for alarm. They were themselves adepts in the game Mr. Gallatin was evidently playing and could be depended upon at the proper moment to out-maneuver him. Mr. Leuppold disagreed and was forced to admit the weakness of Mr. Loring’s position, if, as he suspected, Mr. Gallatin had succeeded in fortifying himself with the proper evidence. The stock was, of course, not in Mr. Loring’s name, but a man of resource might have been able to find means to establish a legal connection of the mine with the railroad. Mr. Leuppold’s opinions usually bore weight, but just now he seemed to have no definite opinions.
The conference of the partners lasted until late in the afternoon, during which time messengers came and went between the firm’s offices and those of the Pequot Coal Company and that of the President of the L. and P. Henry K. Loring was out of town and would not return until the end of the week. A wire was sent to him to return to New York at once, and it was decided that no reply to Mr. Gallatin’s letter should be sent until Mr. Loring had been advised.
Phil Gallatin, in high good humor, lunched that morning with the senior partner at a fashionable restaurant uptown. His work on the Sanborn case was finished. He had been at it very hard for two months, and the two of them had planned to spend the afternoon and following day up at John Kenyon’s farm in Westchester, where they would do some riding, some walking and some resting, of which both were in need. The lunch was a preliminary luxury and they found a table in a corner on the Avenue and ordered.
There was no talk of office matters. John Kenyon had been thoroughly advised of Phil’s work and knew that there was nothing in the way of suggestion or advice that he could offer. He had noticed for some days the gaunt look in his young partner’s face. There were indications of his growing maturity and shadows of the struggle through which he had passed, but there were marks which John Kenyon knew belonged to a different kind of trouble. Gallatin had told him what had happened in the woods and Kenyon had learned something of Phil’s romance in New York. But Kenyon was not given to idle or curious questioning, and he knew that when Phil was ready to speak of private matters he would do so.
Their oysters had been served and their planked fish brought when a fashionable party entered and was conducted by the head waiter to an adjoining table which had been decorated for the occasion. Mrs. Pennington led the way, followed by Miss Ledyard, Mrs. Perrine and Miss Loring. Behind them followed Ogden Spencer, Bibby Worthington, Colonel Broadhurst and Coleman Van Duyn, who was, it appeared, the host.
Phil had hoped that his presence might pass unnoticed; but Nellie Pennington espied him and nodded gayly, so that he had to rise and greet her. This drew the eyes of others and when the party was seated he discovered that Miss Loring, on Van Duyn’s right, was seated facing him and that her eyes after one blank look in his direction were assiduously turned elsewhere. John Kenyon caught the change in Gallatin’s expression, but in a moment Phil had resumed their conversation upon the comparative merits of the Delaware River and Potomac River shad, and their luncheon went on to its conclusion. But the spirits of John Kenyon’s guest had fallen, and Kenyon’s most persuasive stories failed to find a response. In spite of himself Phil Gallatin found himself looking at Jane and thinking of Arcadia. It was three weeks now since that much to be remembered and regretted interview at the Loring house had taken place. The glance he stole at Jane assured him that if he had ever had a hope of reconciliation, the chances for it were now more remote than ever. She wore a huge hat which screened her effectually, and the glimpses he had of her face showed it dimpling in smiles for Coleman Van Duyn or Bibby Worthington, who sat on either side of her. When their eyes had first met he had thought her pale, but as the moments passed a warm color mounted her cheeks. It seemed to Gallatin that never before within his memory had she ever appeared so care-free. She was youth untrammeled, a sister to Euphrosyne, the spirit of joy. It seemed as if she realized that the grim specter which had stolen into her life for a while had been exorcised away, and that she had already forgotten it in the beckoning of the jocund hours. Phil Gallatin had come into her life and gone, leaving no trace in her mind or in her heart.