"All right, if you say so," Shaw consented.
"Well, I say so—and I can pay the damage," said the irate client with emphasis, and stalked out of the office, only to stick his head back into the door with the last injunction:
"This evenin' now, and no mistake about it!"
* * * * *
As chance ordained, Henry Porter did not go amiss in his haste to have the summons served on Graham. It was late in the afternoon and less than four hours before the former footman and his wife were scheduled to leave the city for Stag Inlet that the officer served the paper.
A bomb exploding under Hayward's feet could not have been so unexpected by him. As the officer read the summons and its import broke upon his mind he felt, for the first time in his life, physical weakness in the presence of danger. It staggered him to think of possible results. He had no feeling of guilt: but an awful fear.
President Phillips had passed out of the White House for his regular constitutional while the process was being served, and recognized the officer by his badge and Graham's excitement by the look on his face, but had not stopped to inquire what the trouble was,—for which Graham was profoundly thankful, as it gave him time to catch his breath.
Think as he would, no way of escape could Graham conceive. Being virtually without money, he could not hope in four hours to bring Henry Porter to terms and avoid a publication of the scandal. Exactly what the old man had in mind, anyway, was uncertain, excruciatingly uncertain. The precise nature of the complaint did not appear from the summons. As the suit was based on a lie, it well might be any sort of a lie. But surely, surely, he thought, no woman would falsely speak disgrace to herself. He had had a genuine respect for Lily Porter's character. She had been the best of them all, with the highest ideas and the highest ideals. He would have sworn that she could not have lent herself to a thing of this sort. But since she had been willing to do so at all, to what lengths might she not go? What was the limit they had set? To what public disgrace were they trying to bring him? To what awful lie must he make answer?
As he thought of it the keen sense of his peril, the disgrace, the loss of his commission, and his helplessness, became well-nigh unbearable. If Henry Porter could only have known the extremity of torture he had inflicted in thus making the young fellow "think about hisself awhile," his wrath might have been appeased.
Hayward trembled to think of the moment when the public should know of this suit, but he quaked in absolute terror as he thought of Mr. Phillips' hearing it. And Helen!—what must he do to save her from this shame?—he gladly at the moment could have strangled Old Henry.... But heroics would do no good. He was helpless, bound hand and foot. If he could be saved, if Helen was to be saved, there was but one arm that had the power: her father's. Perhaps, perhaps, with all his attributes of strength and force, he might be able to bring the vengeful negro capitalist to terms. Whatever his terror of Mr. Phillips, he must tell him.... And what were done must be done quickly.