Before his physical eyes were deep cañons of office buildings like his own, towering crag above crag, white curling columns of smoke from busy tugboats, and the great loom of the Brooklyn Bridge with its shuttles of clattering cable-cars. But what he saw was his son, alone in a strange land, struggling with an unknown man, a man intent on murder. With a hand that moved unsteadily the Light-house King lifted the desk telephone and summoned the third vice-president, and when Mr. Sam Caldwell had entered, silently gave him the cablegram.
Sam Caldwell read it and exclaimed with annoyance:
“Looks to me,” he commented briskly, “as though they know why Pino came back. Looks as though they had sent this fellow to do him up, before we can——”
In a strange, thin voice, Mr. Forrester stopped him sharply.
“If the boy’d been hurt—they’d have said so, wouldn’t they?” he demanded.
Sam Caldwell recognized his error. Carefully he reread the cablegram.
“Why, of course,” he assented heartily. “It says here he overpowered the other fellow: says ‘Vega unhurt.’”
In the same unfamiliar, strained tone Mr. Forrester interrupted. “It doesn’t say Roddy is unhurt,” he objected.
The young man laughed reassuringly.
“But the very fact they don’t say so shows—why, they’d know that’s what you most want to hear. I wouldn’t worry about Roddy. Not for a minute.”