He greeted me warmly. "Well, Lawson, did you get things finished up all right?"
"Mr. Rogers, I have a most humiliating admission to——"
"Hold up right there. Cut out all explanations and excuses. Have you brought those bonds as you agreed to, or not?" His eyes were snapping and shifting from one color to another.
"No, I have not got them."
"Why not?"
Had I been a woman I should have clapped my hands to my ears and screamed, so sudden and bomb-like came those two words.
"He had used some of them and has only $904,000 on hand."
"Only $904,000!"
It is impossible to convey the concentrated scorn and sarcasm Mr. Rogers infused into these words, and he continued to glare at me for fully a minute, his eyes as searching as x-rays. When that glare shifted I had a presentiment it would leave me forever a stranger to him, and I made up my mind to turn on my heel and leave his office without a word. I felt that he was in the right, and that if I were in his place I'd glare, too.
Suddenly the expression changed. He said peremptorily: "Lawson, get on the first train for Philadelphia and bring back those agreements executed and the $904,000 instead of the $1,500,000."