So when John arrived he had us both in his office.
"You want to see me?" Carmichael asked gruffly, as if he hadn't much time that morning to waste on the senior member.
"Yes, I wish to talk over certain matters that concern us all, even though they may have no immediate bearing upon the business." Mr. Dround always talked like that when he got the least nervous.
"Well, what is it?" Carmichael asked. He had just arrived, and I suppose his letters interested him more than Mr. Dround's talk.
"You may not have seen the articles in the morning papers—about—about certain privileges which it is alleged—"
"What are the boys yapping about now?" Carmichael demanded, taking up a newspaper from the desk and thrusting his shoulders forward in an ugly fashion.
"It concerns our permit to lay that new switch-track," Mr. Dround explained.
Carmichael laid the paper down and looked at the senior member in a curious way, as if he were trying to make out just what kind of a fool he had to deal with. But as he said nothing, Mr. Dround continued:—
"Recently I had occasion to deny categorically that, so far as I knew, our firm ever made any such kind of arrangement as is here described. My word was challenged. It was a very painful situation, I need not say. Since then I have been thinking—I have been wondering whether this charge—"
He floundered pitifully, disliking to mouth the dreadful words. John helped him out brutally:—