Fortune paced the room, her arms folded tightly across her breast. Strange, there was neither fear nor pain in her heart, only a wild wrath.
When Mortimer returned from the telephone, saying that Wadsworth would be right over, he asked George to explain fully what was going on. It was rather a long story. George managed to get through it with a coherency understandable, but no more. Mrs. Mortimer put her motherly arms about the girl, but she found no pliancy. There was no resistance, but there was that stiffness peculiar to felines when picked up under protest. And there was a little more than the cat in Fortune then; the tigress. She was not her mother's daughter for nothing. To confront her, to overwhelm her with reproach, to show her not the least mercy, stonily to see her led away to prison!
George inspected the revolvers carefully to see if they were loaded.
The bell rang, and Arthur Wadsworth came in. Mortimer knew him; George did not. He drew his interest as it fell due and deposited it in another bank. That was the extent of his relations with Arthur Wadsworth, president of the Merchant-Mechanic Bank of New York.
Arthur was small, thin, blond like his brother, but the hair was so light upon the top of his head that he gave one the impression that he was bald. His eyes looked out from behind half-shut lids; his cheeks were cadaverous; his pale lips met in a straight, unpleasant line. There was not the slightest resemblance between the two brothers, either in their bodies or in their souls. George recognized this fact immediately. He disliked the man instinctively, just as he could not help admiring his rogue of a brother.
"I want you to go with me to my house at once," began George.
"Please explain."
George disliked the voice even more than the man himself. "Everything will be explained there," he replied.
"This is very unusual," the banker complained.
"You will find it so. Come." George moved toward the hall, the revolvers in his coat-pocket.