“You seem to have sold your two hundred shares in the Rogers Trust, Shep—the two hundred you got from your mother’s estate.”
“Why, yes, Father,” Shepherd stammered, staring at the certificate. There was no evidence of irritation in his father’s face; one might have thought that Mills was mildly amused by something.
“You had a perfect right to dispose of it, of course. I’m just a trifle curious to know why you didn’t mention it to me. It seemed just a little—a little—unfriendly, that’s all.”
“No, Father; it wasn’t that!” Shepherd replied hastily.
It had not occurred to him that his father would discover the sale so soon. While he hadn’t in so many words asked Gurley to consider the transaction a confidential matter, he thought he had conveyed that idea to the broker. He felt the perspiration creeping out on his face; his hands trembled so that he hid them in his pockets. Mills, his arms on the desk, was playing with a glass paper weight.
“How much did Gurley give you for it?” he asked.
“I sold it at two seventy-five,” Shepherd answered. The air of the room seemed weighted with impending disaster. An inexorable fate had set a problem for him to solve, and his answers, he knew, exposed his stupidity. It was like a nightmare in which he saw himself caught in a trap without hope of escape.
“It’s worth five hundred,” said Mills with gentle indulgence. “But Gurley, in taking advantage of you, blundered badly. I bought it from him at three eighteen. And just to show you that I’m a good sport”—Mills smiled as he reflected that he had never before applied the phrase to himself—“I’m going to sell it back to you at the price Gurley paid you. And here’s a blank check,—we can close the matter right now.”
Mills pretended to be looking over some papers while Shepherd wrote the check, his fingers with difficulty moving the pen. A crisis was at hand; or was it a crisis? His fear of his father, his superstitious awe of Franklin Mills’s supernatural prescience numbed his will. The desk seemed to mark a wide gulf between them. He had frequently rehearsed, since his talk with Constance, the scene in which he would defend the building of the clubhouse for the battery employees; but he was unprepared for this discovery of his purpose. He had meant to seize some opportunity, preferably when he could drive his father to the battery plant and show him the foundations of the clubhouse, for disclosing the fact that he was going ahead, spending his own money. It hadn’t occurred to him that Gurley might sell the stock to his father. He had made a mess of it. He felt himself cowering, weak and ineffectual, before another of those velvety strokes with which his father was always able to defeat him.
“You’d better go in early tomorrow and get a new certificate; they’re closing the transfer books. The Rogers is merging with the Central States—formal announcement will be made early in the new year. The combination will make a powerful company. The Rogers lately realized very handsomely on some doubtful securities that had been charged off several years ago. It was known only on the inside. Gurley thought he was making a nice turn for himself, but you see he wasn’t so clever after all!”