"It's you, is it?" He was silent for a moment. "Well, you can stay. I've been thinking about you, lately. I can 'tend to two as well as one."
"You've been thinking about me lately, have you?" Marcus repeated. He spoke with a hardihood that came from draughts of brandy more than once indulged in. "You had better have thought of me before."
"I'm thinking to just as much purpose," his father declared grimly. "I haven't been altogether in the dark," he went on, "about your goings and your doings. I know what you've been living on, and how you got it, and who put you up to it all. I know how you have been figuring on my dying and preying on me before my dying; but I'm alive yet, and the next time you see that singing Canadian scoundrel you can tell him so. And I know all about your latest tactics, too. Do you see that?"
A pass-book was lying on his desk, and between its covers there was a packet of checks, bound by a rubber strap. He drew out the top check and extended it towards his son; he used his clumsy thumb and forefinger to keep a strong hold on one end of the paper—the end that bore the signature.
"You've seen it before, too, unless I'm mistaken," he went on, with a glance in which indignation was overlaid by a cruel sense of power and a cruel determination to use it. "You didn't expect it to get around to me quite so quick, did you?"
"I see it, yes," said the young man. "And I've seen it before. What of it?" He spoke like one who had nerved himself to this—and to more.
"What of it?" cried his father, in a sudden fit of rage. "There's this of it! Do you think I'm going to stand being stripped by a thieving scamp like you? Do you think I'm going to be bled drop by drop by a couple of infernal scoundrels? Oh, that whining about your drawing, and your not being allowed to go on with it! You can handle a pen all right enough! You can draw cheeks for me, and you can draw yourself to Joliet! That's the best place, all around, for both of us."
"I shouldn't mind meeting you there," said Marcus, with a contemptuous sneer. "There would be a 'couple,' sure enough—the only one I know anything about."
"Where is that wretch?" cried Brainard, seizing the youth by the arm. "You know; you do, too—you see him every day! Tell me where I can find him! He must be followed up. Let me get him, too, and put him where he belongs!"
"Keep off!" called his son; "keep off, you fool! I haven't seen him for a year, and I don't want to see him for another. It's you I want to see; you and Burt—brother Burt."