Fosdick smiled. “Perhaps you're right,” he said. He took one of the gaudily banded perfectos from his host's box and accepted a light from the match the captain held. Both men blew a cloud of smoke and through those clouds each looked at the other. The preliminaries were over, but neither seemed particularly anxious to begin the real conversation. It was the visitor who, at last, began it.
“Captain Snow,” he said, “I presume your clerk told you I wished to see you on a matter of business.”
“Who? Oh, Labe, you mean? Yes, he told me.”
“I told him to tell you that. It may surprise you, however, to learn that the business I wished to see you about—that I came on from New York to see you about—has nothing whatever to do with the house I'm building down here.”
Captain Zelotes removed his cigar from his lips and looked meditatively at its burning end. “No-o,” he said slowly, “that don't surprise me very much. I cal'lated 'twasn't about the house you wished to see me.”
“Oh, I see! . . . Humph!” The Fosdick mild blue eye lost, for the moment, just a trifle of its mildness and became almost keen, as its owner flashed a glance at the big figure seated at the desk. “I see,” said Mr. Fosdick. “And have you—er—guessed what I did come to see you about?”
“No-o. I wouldn't call it guessin', exactly.”
“Wouldn't you? What would you call it?”
“We-ll, I don't know but I'd risk callin' it knowin'. Yes, I think likely I would.”
“Oh, I see. . . . Humph! Have you had a letter—on the subject?”