“What’s his business?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t know a thing except that Bob’s an only child. He seems to have plenty of money, so I suppose his old man’s fairly well fixed. If he’s one of the crabbed kind we might as well turn around right now and go back.”
“Buck up,” said Pete. “When you turn that line of talk on him, Billy, he’ll just wilt before our eyes.”
“Huh,” said Billy. “Wish you had it to do. Don’t see what I let them rope me into this for, anyway. It’s not my funeral.”
“It’s what you get for knowing the chap,” said I. “Bet you that’s the place now, the stone gate ahead of us.”
It had solid comfort written all over it. There was an old-style white house that rambled around behind a lot of trees and some lawn and nearly fooled you into thinking it was a genuine antique. When you got near it, though, you saw it was a reproduction. It looked like a compromise between a gentleman’s estate and a nice little place out of town. Everything was neat and well groomed, and we felt like vandals for mussing up the newly dusted gravel drive with the automobile tracks. Pete was whistling “This is the Life” softly as we drew up to the door. A trim-looking maid showed us into a living-room with about a million long French windows and a thousand dollars’ worth of white and yellow chrysanthemums standing around in tall vases. Billy cleared his throat and Pete sneaked away to the further side of the room, pretending he wanted to see the view from a window. I started to follow, but Billy grabbed me.
Mr. Perrin came in the next instant. I don’t know what sort of a man the others had pictured, but I know he didn’t look at all like what I’d expected. If I’d seen him, say, in a club without knowing who he was, and anyone had asked me to guess, I wouldn’t have thought twice. “Noted explorer just back from successful rummage in Peru,” I’d have answered. As Billy would say, he was that sort. He had a rather long, lean face with a lot of lines, a wide mouth, a thin nose and a pair of faded blue eyes that were deep set and looked lighter than they were because his skin was as brown as a saddle. He was tall and straight and lean and looked about as fit as any man I ever saw. I warmed up to him right away. Couldn’t help it. There was something about that mouth and those pale blue eyes that was awfully friendly. And when he shook hands he did it quick and hard, and you could feel that his muscles were like little steel wires. It was up to me to introduce myself and the others, which I did, and as soon as I said “football” I saw by a little gleam in his eyes that he was dead on to our game. But he told us in a nice deep voice that he was glad to see us, got us seated in big comfortable chairs, offered cigars and made us feel right at home. Then he waited, smiling, for us to shoot. So Billy stuck his hands in his pockets and opened up.
Billy did himself proud. I wish I could remember just what he said, but, then, it was more the way he put it over than anything else. Porter had tipped us to be dead sober. “Make him understand that the situation is big and serious. Don’t smile except to be polite, and then do it as if it hurt your face.” So Billy started out as grave as a minister. He began by outlining the condition the team was in because of injuries and such, dwelt on the hopeless position in which the coaches found themselves and predicted ruin and disaster unless new material could be found to prop the tottering structure, or words to that effect. And all the time he spoke in low, fateful tones like a doctor breaking the news to the family after a consultation. If he had kept it up two minutes longer I’d have been in tears.
“I gathered from the papers,” said Mr. Perrin just as gravely, “that things were in pretty bad shape at Cambridge. I’m very sorry, Mr. Sawyer.”
Then he waited again, looking appropriately funereal. But there was a little flicker in those blue eyes of his that told me he wasn’t as concerned as he pretended.