Wheaton crossed and recrossed his legs. There was Porter and there was Margrave. To whom did he owe allegiance? He resented the way in which Margrave had taken him to task; he could not see that he had been culpable, unless as against Porter. Yet Porter had told him nothing; if Porter had treated him with a little more frankness, he certainly would never have mentioned Traction to Margrave.
"What I have wouldn't do you any good," he said finally.
"But it might do me some harm! Now, you don't want these shares, Jim. You're entitled to a profit, and I'll pay you a fair price."
"I can't do anything to hurt Mr. Porter," said Wheaton. He remembered just how the drawing-room at the Porters' looked, and the kindness and frankness of Evelyn Porter's eyes.
"Yes, but you've got a duty to me," he stormed, getting red in the face again. "You can bet your life that if it hadn't been for you, I'd never have been in this pickle. Come along now, Jim, I've got a lot of our railroad people to go in on this. They depend absolutely on my judgment. I'm a ruined man if I fail to show up at the meeting to-morrow with a majority of these shares. It won't make any difference to Billy Porter whether he wins out or not. He's got plenty of irons in the fire. I don't know as a matter of fact that I need these shares; but I want to be on the safe side. Does Porter know what you've got?"
Wheaton shook his head.
"Then what's the harm in selling them where you've got a chance, even if you wasn't under any obligations to me? If you didn't know until I told you that the old man was still on the hunt for this stuff, I don't see that you're bound to wait for him to come around and ask you to sell to him. How much shall I make it for?" He opened a drawer and pulled out his check-book.
"They tell me Porter's pretty sick," Margrave continued, running the stubs of the check-book through his thick thumb and forefinger. "Billy isn't as young as he used to be. Very likely he'll never know you had any Traction stock," he added significantly. "How much shall I make it for, Jim?"
Wheaton walked over to the window and looked down into the street, while Margrave watched him with pen in hand.
"How much shall I make it for?" he asked more sharply.