“Fishing!” Langhorne mused. “There is a lot of malaria in those woods, Storm, and the discomforts of camp are abominable, to say nothing of the indigestible cooking provided by the average guide. Now, if you will take my advice, you will pick out some nice, quiet country club with a good green and play your eighteen holes every day. There is nothing like golf to set a man up; gentleman’s game, steadies the nerve, clears the eye, fills the lungs with good fresh air and not too strenuous. Golf——”
“I’ve played it,” Storm interrupted quietly, but the cold fury which possessed him trembled in his tones. “I prefer fishing and I want to rough it for a time. I won’t detain you any longer, Mr. Langhorne. My books are in perfect order and can be turned over to-morrow.”
He withdrew, inwardly seething. Great God, must everyone he encountered remind him? That driver, with the smudge of blood and the long golden hair clinging to it, rose again before him as it had so many times before, and in the privacy of his own office once more he buried his face in his hands to ward off the vision. When, in heaven’s name, would he be free from them all?
At least, his dismal treading of the eternal mill here had ceased forever. When he turned over his books to Sherwood on the morrow and locked his desk, he knew that he would never reopen it. When he returned from the fishing trip it would be easy to plead further ill-health until the moment came to send in his resignation. This phase of existence was over.
He raised his head and looked about at the small but luxuriously appointed office, grown familiar through more than fifteen years of occupancy; revoltingly familiar, he told himself bitterly. He loathed it all! How had the smug, complacent years slipped by without arousing rebellion in his soul before this? He had been a mere cog in the machine——No! Not even that!—a useless appendage, tolerated because of his father! And all the time, how little these daily associates of his had known of the real man, of his possibilities, his subsequent achievements!
He had fooled them, deceived them all, gotten away with two stupendous crimes under their very noses, by gad, and not one of them had an inkling of the truth!
A tap upon the ground glass door interrupted his self-laudation, and Millard entered.
“Hello, Storm. Came to see if you would run out and have a bite of lunch with me,” he began. “Glad you’ve reconsidered your decision to take that long trip. Holworthy told me the news. Deucedly hot to-day, isn’t it?”
“Holworthy?” Storm repeated in unguarded annoyance. What perverse fate had brought those two together?
“Yes,” Millard replied to the unvoiced query. “When he ’phoned to me this morning I asked him out to Greenlea, but he said he couldn’t come; had to work late at the office with Abbott putting him in touch with his details for the next fortnight because you and he—Holworthy, I mean—were going off fishing together. Delighted to hear it, old chap; only I wish I could join you, but you know how I am tied up at home. It will do you a lot more good than months of poking around by yourself thousands of miles from home.”