"I am genuinely sorry for you. If they say no, what will you do?"
"Go back just the same. I have another debt to cancel."
"Call in the morning. I'll let you know what the charges are."
"I forgot. Here are twenty pounds. You can return the balance when I call. I am very grateful."
"By the way, there is a man here by the name of Mallow," began the consul-general.
"Yes," interrupted Warrington, with a smile which was grim and cruel. "I expect to call upon him. He owes me something like fifty pounds, and I am going to collect it." Then he went out.
The consul-general dropped Mallow's perfecto into the waste-basket and lighted his pipe. Once more he read the cablegram. The Andes Construction Company. What a twist, what an absurd kink in the skein! Nearly all of Elsa's wealth lay bound up in this enormous business which General Chetwood had founded thirty odd years before. And neither of them knew!
"I am not a bad man at heart," he mused, "but I liked the young man's expression when I mentioned that bully Mallow."
He joined his family at five. He waved aside tea, and called for a lemon-squash.
"Elsa, I am going to give you a lecture."