The hotel at which Mr. Wallingford had elected to stop was only four blocks from the depot, but he rode there in a cab, and, having grandly emerged after a soul-warming handshake with Mr. Klug, paid liberally to have his friend the inventor taken to his destination. His next step, after being shown to one of the best suites in the house, was to telephone for a certain lawyer whose address he carried in his notebook, and the next to make himself richly comfortable after the manner of his kind. When the lawyer arrived, he found Wallingford, in lounging jacket and slippers and in fresh linen, enjoying an appetizer of Roquefort and champagne by way of resting from the fatigue of his journey. He was a brisk young man, was the lawyer, with his keen eyes set so close together that one praised Nature's care in having inserted such a hard, sharp wedge of nose to keep them apart. He cast a somewhat lingering glance at the champagne as he sat down, but he steadfastly refused Mr. Wallingford's proffer of a share in it.
"Not in business hours," he said, with over-disdain of such weak indulgence. "In the evening some time, possibly," and he bowed his head with a thin-lipped smile to complete the sentence.
"All right," acquiesced J. Rufus; "maybe you will smoke then," and he pointed to cigars.
One of them Mr. Maylie took, and Wallingford was silent until he had lit it.
"How is this town?" he then asked. "Is the treasury full, or are the smart people in power?"
The young man laughed, and, with a complete change of manner, drew his chair up to the table with a jerk.
"Say; you're all right!" he admiringly exclaimed, and—shoved forward the extra glass. "They're in debt here up to their ears."
"Then they'd rather have the bail than the man," Wallingford guessed, as he performed the part of host with a practiced hand.
"Which would you rather have?" asked Maylie, pausing with the glass drawn half way toward him.