“Oh, my God!” he mourned. “Are all the blatherskites, thieves, and swindlers in this world on my track?”
“Don’t tie any of those kind of tags on to me, Judge Kingsley. It isn’t fair!”
“You have robbed me!”
“Confound it! Look at the contracts!” He did not seem to be taking any interest in the papers; he merely waggled the packet about like a child waving a rattle.
“First one, and then the other! They have robbed me. I am ruined!”
I squatted down in front of him and made him look at me. I was in the mood for any kind of self-sacrifice. I wanted to beat it into his old head that there was one man who was trying to help him.
“Judge Kingsley, listen to me! You are sure of getting your two thousand dollars for your wood-lot. I say again, go yourself and collect the money. If my estimates are in any way near right—and I reckon I am inside the truth—there’s around a thousand dollars profit in this deal, profit I was intending to take for myself. But, seeing that you feel as you do about my actions, I’ll hand the whole thing over to you. Take it all! Come to me in the morning when you’re feeling better and I’ll explain my trade with Henshaw Hook and the choppers.”
He looked at me and never said a word.
“I don’t even ask any pay for the time I have put in,” I said, trying to make myself as much of an angel as I could, now that I was started on the savior trail. “You understand, don’t you? All you’ve got to do is keep my promises to the men and pull down around three thousand in cash!”
In a story-book that would have been his cue to get up and clasp me to his breast. He simply blinked at me. I began to get a little warm in the region of my neckband.