Mr. Wymett leaned back from his desk and studied his caller from beneath heavy eyelids. His posture lent to his face a furtively benevolent look as of one meditating the performance of a good deed on the sly. Such was not his precise intent, as regarded young Robson. He didn’t trust young Robson. He did n’t trust The Record. For that matter he was not in a mood to trust anybody or anything in a calumnious world. He opened a small cabinet at his elbow which he had hastily closed upon young Robson’s entrance.
“May I offer you a drink?” he said.
“No; thank you.”
“Good! Nothing mixes so badly with printer’s ink,” approved the older man patronizingly. “I seldom touch it, otherwise than as a digestant.” He poured himself a liberal allowance and set the glass on his desk. “Whom do you represent?”
“Myself.”
Mr. Wymett smiled tolerantly. “Of course. But whose capital?”
“My own.”
“A secret deal, eh? What reason have you to suppose that the paper is for sale?”
“I was in the Senate.”
Thus unpleasantly recalled to his thorny situation, Mr. Wymett gulped down his whiskey and hastily poured another.