He backed nervously to the door.
"I have a little sherry in my office, Mr. Knox—twenty-six years in the wood. If you—"
"For God's sake, Hawes, there's nothing the matter with me!" I exclaimed, and he went. But I heard him stand a perceptible time outside the door before he tiptoed away.
Almost immediately after, some one entered the waiting-room, and the next moment I was facing, in the doorway, a man I had never seen before.
He was a tall man, with thin, colorless beard trimmed to a Vandyke point, and pale eyes blinking behind glasses. He had a soft hat crushed in his hand, and his whole manner was one of subdued excitement.
"Mr. Knox?" he asked, from the doorway.
"Yes. Come in."
"I have been here six times since noon," he said, dropping rather than sitting in a chair. "My name is Lightfoot. I am—was—Mr. Fleming's cashier."
"Yes?"
"I was terribly shocked at the news of his death," he stumbled on, getting no help from me. "I was in town and if I had known in time I could have kept some of the details out of the papers. Poor Fleming—to think he would end it that way."