“All right,” he grunted at last. “I guess that's the last word, Gregory. But you tell her from me that if she doesn't reopen the matter of her own accord, she'll have a man's life on her conscience.”
“I'll not tell her anything about it. I'm not only her brother; I'm her manager now. And I'm not kicking any hole in the boat that floats me.”
He was self-confident and slightly insolent; the hands with which he lighted a fresh cigarette no longer trembled, and the glance he threw at Dick was triumphant and hostile.
“As a man sows, Clark!” he said. “You sowed hell for a number of people once.”
Bassett had to restrain an impulse to kick him out of the door. When he had gone Bassett turned to Dick with assumed lightness.
“Well,” he said, “here we are, all dressed up and nowhere to go!”
He wandered around the room, restless and disappointed. He knew, and Dick knew, that they had come to the end of the road, and that nothing lay beyond. In his own unpleasant way Fred Gregory had made a case for his sister that tied their hands, and the crux of the matter had lain in his final gibe: “As a man sows, Clark, so shall he reap.” The moral issue was there.
“I suppose the Hines story goes by the board, eh?” he commented after a pause.
“Yes. Except that I wish I'd known about him when I could have done something. He's my half-brother, any way you look at it, and he had a rotten deal. Sometimes a man sows,” he added, with a wry smile, “and the other fellow reaps.”
Bassett went out after that, going to the office on the chance of a letter from Melis, but there was none. When he came back he found Dick standing over a partially packed suitcase, and knew that they had come to the end of the road indeed.