'My Uncle Arthur is executor of my mother's estate.'
'You go right after him. No time to lose. We must drive this right through.'
'I'll see him to-morrow.'
'Couldn't you find him to-night?'
5
Uncle Arthur lived in Chicago, out on the West Side. It was a long ride—first by suburban train into the city, then by cable-car through miles upon miles of gray wooden tenements and dingy gray-brick tenements. You breathed in odours of refuse and smoke and coal-gas all the way.
Uncle Arthur was as thin as McGibbon, but wholly without the little gleam in the eyes that advertised the proprietor of the Gleaner as an eager and perhaps dangerous man. Uncle Arthur was a man of method who had worked through long years into a methodical but fairly substantial prosperity.
His thin nose was long, and prominent. His brow was deeply furrowed. His gaze was critical. He believed firmly that life is a disciplinary training for some more important period of existence after death. He didn't smoke or drink. Nor would he keep in his employ those who indulged in such practices. He was an officer of several organisations aiming at civic and social reform.
Uncle Arthur laid a pedantic stress, in all business matters, on what he called 'putting the thing right end to.' It was not unnatural, therefore, that he should receive a distinctly unfavourable impression when Henry began, with a foolish little gesture and a great deal of fumbling at his moustache, slouching in his chair, by saying 'There's a little chance come up—oh, nothing much, of course—for me to make a little money, sort of on the side—and you see I'll be twenty-one in November; so it's just a matter of three or four months, anyway—and I was figuring—oh, just talking the thing over——'
His voice trailed off into a mumble.