This served to throw him into a renewed panic. It required a tremendous effort to concentrate upon his business affairs, and it took the genius of an actor to carry him through the inconsequent details of his every-day life without betrayal. Alone, at home, upon the crowded 'Change, in deadly-dull directors' meetings, that sinister shadow overhung him. These long, leaden hours of suspense were doing what nothing else had been able to do since he took himself definitely in hand. They were harder to bear than any of those disciplinary experiences which had turned his hair white and burned his youth to an ash.
At last Donnelly came.
"Corte has framed it for to-morrow," he announced with evident satisfaction.
"To-morrow?" Norvin echoed, faintly.
"Yes. He's sailing on the Philadelphia at eleven o'clock—no stops between here and New York. They'll be waiting for Narcone at Quarantine."
"I'm glad—it's time to do something."
Donnelly rubbed his palms together and showed his teeth in a smile, "Corte says he'll have him at the Cromwell Line docks without fail, so that will save us grabbing him on the street and holding him until sailing time. If we pull it off quietly, at the last minute, nobody'll know anything about it. You'd better be at my office by nine, in case anything goes wrong."
"You may count on me," Blake answered in a tone that gave no hint of his inward flinching. But once alone, he found that his nerves would not allow him to work. He closed his desk and went home. When the heat of the afternoon diminished he took out his saddle-horse and went for a gallop, thinking in this way to blow some of the tortured fancies out of his mind, but he did not succeed.
Despite his agitation, he ate a hearty dinner—much as a condemned man devours his last meal—but he could not sleep. All night he alternately tossed in his bed or paced his room restlessly, his features working, his body shivering.
He ate breakfast, however, with an apparent appetite that delighted his colored servant, and as the clock struck nine he walked into Donnelly's office, smoking a cigar which he did not taste.