There came a knock at the door and Johnson's voice called her name.
“Miss Mabel,” he whispered, “Miss Mabel, will you come, please? The doctor wants you right away.”
She rose quickly, drawing her hand across her eyes as she did so.
“I am coming, Johnson,” she said. Then, turning to me, “I will be back as soon as I can. Do try—try to think. You MUST, for Father's sake, for all our sakes.”
She left the room. I rose and, with my hands in my pockets, began to pace the floor. This was the tightest place I had ever been in. There had been a time, years before, when I prided myself on my knowledge of the stock market and its idiosyncrasies. Then, in the confidence of youth, I might have risen to a situation like this, might have tackled it and had the nerve to pull it through or blame the other fellow if I failed. Now I was neither youthful nor confident. Whatever I did would be, in all human probability, the wrong thing, and to do the wrong thing now meant, perhaps, ruin for the sick man upstairs. And she had trusted me! She had sent for me in her trouble! I had “never failed her before”!
I walked the floor, trying hard to think. It was hard to think calmly, to be sensible, and yet I realized that common-sense and coolness were what I needed now. I tried to remember the outcome of similar situations in financial circles, but that did not help me. I remembered a play I had seen, “The Henrietta” was its name. In that play, a young man with more money than brains had saved the day for his father, a Wall Street magnate, by buying a certain stock in large quantities at a critical time. He arrived at his decision to buy, rather than sell, by tossing a coin. The father had declared that his son had hit upon the real secret of success in stock speculation. Possibly the old gentleman was right, but I could not make my decision in that way. No, whatever I did must have some reason to back it. Was there no situation, outside of Wall Street, which offered a parallel? After all, what was the situation? Some one wished to buy a certain thing, and some one else wished to buy it also. Neither party wanted the other to get it. There had been a general game of bluff and then . . . Humph! Why, in a way, it was like the original bidding for the Shore Lane land.
It was like it, and yet it was not. I owned the land and Colton wanted to buy it; so also did Jed Dean. Each side had made bids and had been refused. Then the bidders had, professedly, stood pat, but, in reality, they had not. Jed had told me, in his latest interview, that he would have paid almost anything for that land, if he had had to. And Colton—Colton had invented the Bay Shore Development Company. That company had fooled Elnathan Mullet and other property holders. It had fooled Captain Jed. It had come very near to fooling me. If Mabel Colton had not given me the hint I might have been tricked into selling. Then Colton would have won, have won on a “bluff.” A good bluff did sometimes win. I wondered . . .
I was still pacing the floor when Miss Colton returned to the library. She was trying hard to appear calm, but I could see that she was greatly agitated.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is he—”
“He is not as well just now. I—I must not leave him—or Mother. But I came back for a moment, as I told you I would. Is there anything new?”