"Our talk may take us some time," he explained. "I have been trying to find you for several days. I have something to ask you to do for me. You may think it strange that I should go to you instead of to one of my old friends. But it is something Isaac would have done for me. It is for my boy."
The weariness of years was in his voice. As briefly and as simply as he could, he stated the matter. Parker had disappeared; he had gone to New York and there drawn heavily on his father. The journey which Colonel Hitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose of finding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now there was a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father to follow it up himself.
"I don't understand the boy," Colonel Hitchcock concluded. "I'm afraid everything I do is wrong. I get angry. I have no patience with his polo, his spending so much money uselessly—he spends ten times as much money as any man among my friends did at his age."
"You have ten times as much as any one of their fathers had," Sommers protested with a smile.
"Well, then, I guess I had better stop, if that's what it means. He may find there isn't so much after all. This panic is pushing me. I can't leave Chicago another day. He should be here fighting with me, helping me—and he is sneaking in some hotel, with his tail between his legs."
He breathed heavily at the bitterness of the thought. Everything in his life had been honorable, open to all: he had fought fair and hard and long—for this.
"If it weren't for Louise and his mother, I would let him starve until he was ready to come home. But his mother is ill—she can't be troubled."
"And you can't let him disgrace himself publicly—do something that would make it hard for him to come back at all," Sommers suggested.
"No, I suppose not," the older man admitted, with a grateful glance. "I can't refuse to help him, poor boy; perhaps I have made him weak."
Sommers offered to do what he could,—to hunt Parker up, get him on his feet, and bring him back to Chicago. He would leave that night. They had stopped at the club to finish their talk, and while Colonel Hitchcock was writing some letters, Sommers drove to his rooms for his bag. It was nearly midnight before he returned. As they drove over to the station, Colonel Hitchcock said: