"No," thundered Enoch. "You know the Brown papers. If they discovered what Miss Allen did for us all at the Ferry, how she led me back to El Tovar, what would they do with it?"
Abbott looked from Enoch to Milton in astonishment. Milton started to speak, but Enoch interrupted, "You are, of course, thinking that I should have thought of that long before, when I asked her to let me go back to El Tovar with her. But I didn't! I had been in the Canyon long enough to have forgotten what could be made of my adventure by bad minds. I was a cursed fool, moving in a fool's paradise and I must take my punishment. If ever—"
Jonas opened the door from the outer office. "The President, Mr.
Secretary," he said.
Enoch started toward the telephone, but Jonas spoke impatiently—"No!
No! not that."
"The President of what, Jonas!" asked Abbott.
Jonas lifted his chest and flung the door wide. "The President of the
United States of America," he announced, and the President came in.
Enoch rose. "Don't let me disturb you, Mr. Secretary. I can wait," said the chief executive.
"We were quite finished, Mr. President. May I, I wonder, introduce Mr. Milton to you, the geologist whom Brown said headed the drunken expedition down the Colorado."
The President looked keenly at Milton as they shook hands. "Mr.
Huntingdon took great pains to deny that story, publicly," he said.
"Can't you persuade him, Mr. Milton, to do as much for himself, to-day."
"That's exactly why I'm here, Mr. President!" exclaimed Milton. "But he's absolutely obdurate!"