"It was very clever. And yet, somehow, it doesn't sound right—" she puzzled, "Are you sure it's honest?"
"Honest?" he snorted, halted in mid-career, "Of course it's honest! Why isn't it honest?"
Confronted with the direct question, she really did not know. She groped, proffering tentatively some of the arguments half remembered from Rowlee's editorial columns. But she confronted now a lawyer, sure of himself. Keith explosively, and contemptuously demolished her contentions. Everything was absolutely legal, every step of it. If a man hadn't a right to buy in property at any sale and sell it again where he wanted, where in thunder was our boasted liberty? Just the kind of fool notion women get! Keith in his honest pride and triumph had come for sympathy and admiration. Turned back on himself, he became vaguely resentful, and shortly left the house.
Hardly had the front door closed after him when Nan burst into tears. She had not meant it to come out that way at all. Of course she had had no real thought that Milton would do anything dishonest; how absurd of him to take it that way! She had simply expressed a queer instinctive thought that had flashed across her mind; and now she could not for the life of her guess how she had come to do so. Miserably and passionately she realized that she had bungled it.
XXVI
But if Keith missed the appreciation of his triumph at home, he received full meed of it downtown. In a corner of the Empire a dozen of the biggest men in town were gathered. They were Sam Brannan; Palmer, of Palmer, Cook & Co.; Colonel E. D. Baker, the original "silver-tongued orator"; Dick Blatchford, the contractor; Judge Terry, of the Supreme Court; oily, coarse Ned McGowan; Nugent and Rowlee, editors, and some others. They were doing an exceedingly important part of their daily business: sipping their late afternoon cocktails. Calhoun Bennett joined them.
"Little item of news to interest you-all," drawled the Southerner. "I've just come down from the recorder's office. The deeds for the water lots have just been recorded." He paused.
"Have a drink, Cal," urged Dick Blatchford, "and sit down. What of it?"
"They were recorded in the names of Malcolm Neil and young Keith. I'll have a cocktail."
"That so? Pretty shaky title. Which sale did they record under?"