The lawyer tapped his desk with a pencil. “I don’t know what it looks like,” he answered. “That is to say, I don’t—I can’t believe it is what it appears, at this distance, to be. If it is, it is the most—”
He paused. Captain Elisha waited for him to go on and, when he did not do so, asked another question.
“The most what?” he demanded. “Is it likely to be very bad?”
“Why—why—well, I can’t say even that yet. But there! as I told you, I’m not going to permit it to worry me. And you mustn’t worry, either. That’s why I don’t give you any further particulars. There may be nothing in it, after all.”
His visitor smiled. “Say, Mr. Sylvester,” he said, “you’re like the young-ones used to be when I was a boy. There’d be a gang of ’em waitin’ by the schoolhouse steps and when the particular victim hove in sight they’d hail him with, ‘Ah, ha! you’re goin’ to get it!’ ‘Wait till teacher sees you!’ and so on. Course the victim would want to know what it meant. All the satisfaction he got from them was, ‘That’s all right! You’ll find out! You just wait!’ And the poor feller put in the time afore the bell rung goin’ over all the things he shouldn’t have done and had, and wonderin’ which it was this time. You hinted to me a week ago that there was a surprisin’ possibility loomin’ up in ’Bije’s financial affairs. And ever since then I’ve been puzzlin’ my brains tryin’ to guess what could happen. Ain’t discovered any more of those Cut Short bonds, have you?”
The bonds to which he referred were those of a defunct Short Line railroad. A large number of these bonds had been discovered among A. Rodgers Warren’s effects; part of his “tangled assets,” the captain had termed them, differentiating from the “tangible” variety.
“Abbie, my housekeeper, has been writin’ me,” he went on, “about havin’ the sewin’ room papered. She wants my advice concernin’ the style of paper; says it ought to be pretty and out of the common, but not too expensive. I judge what she wants is somethin’ that looks like money but ain’t really wuth more than ten cents a mile. I’ve been thinkin’ I’d send her a bale or so of those bonds; they’d fill the bill in those respects, wouldn’t they?”
Sylvester laughed. “They certainly would, Captain,” he replied. “No, we haven’t unearthed any more of that sort. And, as for this mystery of ours, I’ll give you the answer—if it’s worth giving at all, in a very short time. Meanwhile, you go home and forget it.”
“Well, I’ll try. But I guess it sticks out on my face, like a four days’ toothache. But I won’t worry about that. You know best whether to tell me now or not, and—well, I’m carryin’ about all the worry my tonnage’ll stand, as ’tis.”
He drew a long breath. Sylvester regarded him sympathetically.