"You once said I could scrap, Mr. Mallinsbee. I promise you I scrapped as I never did before. That man hasn't one whole feature in his face, and if the hangman's rope had been drawn tight around his neck it couldn't have done very much more damage than my fingers did. I tell you he's has his med'cine good and plenty. There's no need for more—that way. But we're going to hurt him. We're going to hurt him more by outing him from this deal of ours than ever by killing him. We're going to stand at nothing now to—'out' him. Let's get our minds fixed that way. If one plan don't succeed—another must."
Standing there eye to eye Gordon won his way. He saw with satisfaction the fire in the old man's eyes slowly die down. Then he watched him reluctantly return to his chair.
It was not until the rancher had struck a match and relit his cigar that Gordon ventured to return to his desk.
"You're right, boy," Mallinsbee said at last. "You're right—and you've done right. If the whole scheme busts we—can't help it. But—but we'll out that—cur."
The hall porter at the Carbhoy Building was perturbed. He was more than perturbed. He was ruffled out of his blatant superiority and dignity, and reduced to a condition when he could not state, with any degree of accuracy, whether the Statue of Liberty was a symbol of Freedom or a mere piece of cheap decoration for New York Harbor.
The precincts of the beautiful colored marble entrance hall over which he presided had been invaded, against all rules, by a woman who obviously had no business there. Moreover, he had been powerless to stay the invasion. Also he had been forced to submit out of a sheer sense of politeness to the sex, a politeness it was not his habit to display even towards his wife. Furthermore, like the veriest underling, instead of the autocrat he really was, he had been ordered—ordered—to announce the lady's arrival to Mr. James Carbhoy, and forthwith conduct her to that holy of holies, which no other female, except the cleaner, had ever been permitted to enter. It was Mrs. James Carbhoy who had caused the deplorable upheaval.
But Mrs. James Carbhoy was in no mood to parley with any hall porter, however gorgeous his livery. She was in no mood to parley even with her husband. She was disturbed out of her customary condition of passive acquiescence. She was heartbroken, too, and ready to weep against any manly chest with which her head came into contact. It is doubtful, even, if a Fifth Avenue policeman's chest would have been safe from her attentions in that direction. And surely distress must certainly be overwhelming that would not shrink from such support.
James Carbhoy detected the signs the moment his door was opened, and his wife tripped over the fringe of the splendid Turkey carpet and precipitated herself into the great morocco arm-chair nearest to her, waving a bunch of letter-paper violently in his direction.
"I've been to the Inquiry Bureau, and had a man detailed right away to go and find the boy," she burst out at once. Then all her mother's anxiety merged into an attack upon the man who silently rose from his desk and closed the door she had left open. "I don't know what to say to you, James," she went on. "I can't just think why I'm sitting right here in the presence of such a monster. Here you've driven our boy from the house. Maybe you've driven him to his death, or even worse, and I can't even get you to make an attempt to discover if he's alive or—or dead. This letter came this morning," she went on, holding the pages aloft, lest he should escape their reproach. "And if he hasn't gone and married some hussy there, out in some uncivilized region, I don't know a thing. S'pose he's married a half-breed or—or a squaw," she cried, her eyes rolling in horror at the bare idea. "It—it'll be your fault—your doing. You're just a cruel monster, and if it wasn't for our Gracie's sake I'd—I'd get a divorce. You—you ought to be ashamed, James Carbhoy. You ought—ought to be in—in prison, instead of sitting there grinning like some fool image."
The millionaire leaned back in his chair wearily.