“Never? Well, listen here; may the Saints lead him off this lot, immediate! If they don’t, there’s cloud banks and rain and hail ahead for you and me. That’s Cram!”
“So it is!” said David. “Well, what of it? He has no grudge against us.”
“Hasn’t he, then? Didn’t you pass your exams, three years ago, and didn’t he fail? Watch out, me lad! He hasn’t changed his spots in three years. I know him, and all his breed.”
“Don’t be so suspicious,” said David, watching the trim, thin figure slowly approaching. “Honestly, Red, why do you let that man get your goat? You never act like that with anybody else, no matter what they do.”
Red shrugged. “Dunno!” he said. “My brother holds that every man has his own particular devil to torture and tantalize him. I feel shame, Davie, but Walter Cram seems to be my own little devil. I have got to have two sodies, now. I’m that upset.”
Cram, for it was he, glanced idly at the passing roadster but did not recognize the occupants. The years had made little outward change in his appearance. He was taller, still thin, and moved with nervous alertness. He wore glasses, and they disguised the shadows under his eyes; violet shadows, that hinted of escapades that he would not care to publish. For Wally Cram, the man, was still as devious as Wally, the boy. Strangely enough, the one fever that burned in his blood, his one dream, his sole ambition, was based on an overwhelming vanity.
Without the ability to achieve the eminence he aspired to, he longed for a foremost place in the public eye. In his thoughts all heroes wore his own features. Lindbergh, winging his lonely way to France; Byrd, exploring a frozen world; Andrews, forcing the Gobi desert to speak an articulate language of past æons—Cram wanted what they had, but he had grown into a lazy man, incapable of sustained effort.
Reading a newspaper in his New York hotel one day, Wally had seen an article that had given him a grand idea—a magnificent idea. At once he called his lawyers in Oklahoma City on long distance, and held a conversation with them filled with so many millions that even the telephone operator was impressed.
A week later he was in Ayre, and walking through the lobby of the hotel he heard a familiar voice.
“Why, Mister Cram!” it said.