Embarrassed by his own feeling, annoyed that Sam Caldwell should have discovered it, Mr. Forrester answered, “You wouldn’t. He isn’t your son.”
He reached for a cable form, and wrote rapidly:
“Von Amberg. Willemstad, Curaçao, W. I. Forrester most certainly not in our confidence. Return him Cabello. Is he”—the pen hesitated and then again moved swiftly—“unhurt?”
He drew another blank toward him and addressing it to McKildrick, wrote: “Why is Forrester in Curaçao? Cable him return. Keep him on job, or lose yours.”
For a moment Mr. Forrester sat studying the two messages, then he raised his eyes.
“I have half a mind,” he said, “to order him home. I would, if he weren’t doing so well down there.” With an effort to eliminate from his voice any accent of fatherly pride, Mr. Forrester asked coldly: “McKildrick reports that he is doing well, doesn’t he?”
The third vice-president nodded affirmatively.
“If he comes back here,” argued Mr. Forrester, “he’ll do nothing but race his car, and he’ll learn nothing of the business. And then, again,” he added doubtfully, “while he’s down there I don’t want him to learn too much of the business, not this Pino Vega end of it, or he might want to take a hand, and that might embarrass us. Perhaps I had better cable him, too.”
He looked inquiringly at the third vice-president, but that gentleman refused to be drawn.
“He isn’t my son,” he remarked.