“You are late for luncheon, if that’s what you mean; but I dare say Mr. Foljambe will look out for you. It is always a treat to my young women to descend upon me for their mid-day meal, and I am well broken in to supplying them.”
When they stopped before the desired building and Olive offered him her purse to pay the cab, her kind friend declined, of course, to receive it, but observed that her cheeks had again grown very white. In crossing the hall to the elevator he made her lean upon his arm, and as they shot up to the floor upon which Martin Foljambe now transacted his affairs, in the office of his assignee, her escort felt that she was trembling painfully.
“I am growing weaker,” thought poor Olive to herself. “How wretched to frighten papa like this. Oh, I must not, I will not faint! I will hold out till I tell him about San Miguel.”
“Courage, my child,” said Mr. Whitwell. “In one moment you’ll be there.”
At the end of a long corridor they saw the names they had come in search of.
“He is in, Miss Foljambe,” said the young man to whom she had put the query, “but I am sorry to say our orders are that Mr. Foljambe is not to be interrupted. He is receiving some gentlemen on important business.”
“Two foreigners?” asked the girl, forcing herself to speak calmly.
“I think so, Miss Foljambe. I was out at lunch when they called, but I understood they are Spanish gentlemen, and Mr. Foljambe’s orders were most explicit that he is not to be disturbed.”
Olive never knew how her strength held out to march past the astonished clerk, tap at the door of her father’s room, and follow this up by entering the forbidden portal. Quite two hours had passed since she had quitted her home upon her mission of warning. There had been full time for “Juan” to induce Ramirez to decide upon their plan of action, find out Mr. Foljambe’s habitat downtown, and proceed without interruption to the spot.
As already stated, Foljambe had decided that the mine was worthless, and had advised his assignee to sell the San Miguel stock at whatever price it would fetch. When, therefore, the two Mexicans had appeared—offering for it a merely nominal sum, to be sure, but accompanying their proposition with the guileless explanation that, as Juan lived near the mine and had a little money, he was willing to risk something on the venture of becoming part owner of the property, though it seemed to be of no real value—Martin considered himself in luck. He thought that here was a windfall, though certainly not a large one.