“Pleased to have met you, Mr. Burnit,” he rumbled hoarsely, and took his coat and hat. “Sorry I can’t stay. Promised to meet a man.”
“Coming back?” asked Garland.
“Might,” responded the other, and was gone.
As soon as Stone had left, the trifle of strain that had been apparent prior to Bobby’s very decided statement that he would go into the business, was lifted; and Mrs. Sharpe, pink of cheek and sparkling of eye and exhilarated by the wine to her utmost of purely physical attractiveness, moved when the coffee was served to a chair between Bobby and Garland, and, gifted with a purring charm, exerted herself to the utmost to please the new-comer. She puzzled Bobby. The woman was an entirely new type to him, and he could not fathom her.
With the clearing of the table more champagne was brought, and Bobby began to have an uneasy dread of a “near-orgie,” such as was associated in the minds of the knowing ones with this crowd. Sharpe, however, quickly removed this fear, for, pushing aside his own glass with a bare sip after it had been filled, he drew forth a pencil and produced some papers which he spread before Bobby.
“I imagined that you would have a very favorable report on the Brightlight Electric,” he said with a smile, “so I took the liberty of bringing along an outline of my plan for reorganization. If Mr. Garland and Mrs. Sharpe will excuse us for talking shop we might glance over them together.”
“You’re selfish,” pouted Mrs. Sharpe quite prettily, but, nevertheless, she turned her exclusive attention to Garland for the time being.
With considerable interest Bobby plunged into the business at hand. Here was a well-established concern that had been doing business for three decades, which had been paying ten per cent. dividends for years, and which would doubtless continue to do so for many years to come. An opportunity to obtain control of it solved his problem of investment at once, and he strove to approach its intricacies with intelligence. He became vaguely aware, by and by, that just behind him Garland and Mrs. Sharpe were carrying on a most animated conversation in an undertone interspersed with much laughter, and once, with a start of annoyance, he overheard Garland telling a slightly risqué story, at which Mrs. Sharpe laughed softly and with evident relish. He glanced around involuntarily. Garland had his arm across the back of her chair, and they were leaning toward each other in a close proximity which Bobby reflected with sudden savageness could not possibly occur if that were his wife; nor was he much softened by the later reflection that, in the first place, a woman of her type never could have been his wife, and that, in the second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling.
His glance was but a fleeting one, and he turned from them with a look which Sharpe, noting, misinterpreted.
“I had hoped,” he said, “to go into this thing very thoroughly, so that we could begin the reorganization at once, with the preliminaries completely understood; but if we are detaining you from any engagement, Mr. Burnit—”