"Ed lives out his way, and he says it's a long-term typhoid. You can't tell when he'll be back."
"Has the old man wired anything new about his plans?"
"You'll have to ask Miss Bellows. I haven't heard anything."
"He said he'd be here next Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, didn't he?"
The draughtsman stared hard at Hart, wondering what was in the man's mind. But he made no answer to the last remark, and presently the architect sauntered to the next window.
As Jackson well knew, Graves was waiting to close that arrangement which he had proposed for building an apartment house. The architect had intended to look up the Canostota specifications before he went further with Graves, but he had been distracted by other matters, and had thought nothing more about the troublesome I-beams until this morning.
Jackson Hart was not given to undue speculation over matters of conduct. He had a serviceable code of business morals, which hitherto had met all the demands of his experience. He called this code "professional etiquette." In this case he was not clear how the code should be applied. The Canostota was not his affair. It was only by the merest accident that he had been sent there that day to supervise the electricians, and had seen that drill-hole, which had led him to question the thickness of the I-beams, and he might very well have been mistaken about them. If there were anything wrong with them, at any rate, it was Wright's business to see that the contractor was properly watched when the steel work was being run through the mill. And he did not feel any special sense of obligation toward his employer, who had never displayed any great confidence in him.
He wanted the contractor's commission now more than ever, with his engagement to Helen freshly pricking him to look for bread and butter; wanted it all the more because any thought of fighting his uncle's will had gone when Helen had accepted him. It was now clearly his business to provide for his future as vigorously as he could....
When he rang for the stenographer and told her to show Graves into his office, he had made up his mind. Closing his door, he turned and looked into the contractor's heavy face with an air of alert determination. He was about to play his own game for the first time, and he felt the man's excitement of it!
The two remained shut up in the architect's cubby-hole for over an hour. When Cook had returned from the restaurant in the basement where he lunched, and the other men had taken their hats and coats from the lockers, Hart stepped out of his office and walked across the room to Cook's table. He spread before the draughtsman a fresh sepia sketch, the water scarcely dried on it. It was the front elevation for a house, such a one as is described impressively in the newspapers as "Mr. So-and-So's handsome country residence."