One thing remained to him; the pride that should 295 stiffen him in the presence of his accusers and judges. When he went into the eclipse of ruin, at least he would go with unflinching gallantry.
And it was in that mood that Spurrier reached his club in New York and prepared himself for the ordeal of the next day’s interview.
He had wired Harrison of his coming, but not of his hopelessness, and when his telephone jangled and he heard the voice of the financier, he recognized in it an undercurrent of exasperation, which carried omen of a difficult interview.
“That you, Spurrier? This is Harrison. Be at my office at eleven to-morrow morning. Perhaps you can construe certain riddles.”
“Of what nature, sir?”
“Of a nature that won’t bear full discussion over the wire. We have had an anonymous letter from some mysterious person who claims to come with the situation in a sling. It may be a crank whom we’ll have to throw out—or some one we dare not ignore. At all events, it’s up to you to dispose of him. He’s in your province. If you fail, we lose out and, as I said once before, you go to the scrap heap.”
Spurrier hung up the phone and sat in a nerveless trepidation which was new and foreign to his nature. This interview of to-morrow morning would call for the tallest bluffing he had ever attempted, and the chances would, perhaps, turn on hair-trigger elements of personal force.
He must depend on his coolness, audacity, and adroitness to win a decision, and, except by guesswork, he could not hope to formulate in advance the terrain 296 of battle or the nature of counter-attack with which he must meet his adversary.
That evening he strolled along Broadway and found himself yielding to a dangerous and whimsical mood. He wondered how many other men outwardly as self-assured and prosperous as himself were covertly confessing suicide as one of to-morrow’s probabilities.
Over Longacre Square the incandescent billboards flamed and flared. The darning-wool kitten disported itself with mechanical abandon. The woman who advertised a well-known corset and the man who exploited a brand of underwear brilliantly made and unmade their toilets far above the sidewalk level. Motors shrieked and droned and crowds drifted.