"Now, I want you to tell me something; I want you to answer up fair and square. I've got to come right down to brass tacks with you and I want you to tell me the God's truth. How much Traction has Billy Porter got?"
Wheaton grew white, and the lids closed over his eyes sleepily.
"Come out with it," puffed Margrave. "If you've been making a fool of me I want to know it."
"I don't know what right you've got to ask me such a question," Wheaton answered coldly.
"No right,—no right!" Margrave panted. "You damned miserable fool, what do you know or mean by right or wrong either? I can take my medicine as well as the next man, but when a friend does me up, then I throw up my hands. Why did you tell me you knew what Porter was doing, and lead me to think—"
"Mr. Margrave," said Wheaton, "I didn't come here to be abused by you. If I've done you any injury, I'm not aware of it."
"I guess that's right," said Margrave ironically. "What I want to know is what you let me think Porter wasn't taking hold of Traction for? You knew I was going into it. I told you that with the fool idea that you were a friend of mine. You told me the old man had stopped buying—"
"And when I did I betrayed a confidence," said Wheaton, virtuously. "I had no business telling you anything of the kind."
"When you told me that," Margrave went on in bitter derision, shaking his finger in Wheaton's face,—"when you told me that you told me a damned lie, that's what you did, Jim Wheaton."
"You can't talk to me that way," said Wheaton, sitting up in his chair resentfully. "When I told you that, I believed it," and he added, with a second's hesitation, "I still believe it."