“I would if I could,” Tembarom replied, as if thinking it over. “I would if I could.”
Palliser treated him to the far from pleasing smile again.
“But it’s quite impossible at present?” he suggested. “Excitement is not good for him, and all that sort of thing. You want time to think it over.”
Tembarom’s slowly uttered answer, spoken as if he were still considering the matter, was far from being the one he had expected.
“I want time; but that’s not the reason you can’t see him right now. You can’t see him because he’s not here. He’s gone.”
Then it was Palliser who started, taken totally unaware in a manner which disgusted him altogether. He had to pull himself up.
“He’s gone!” he repeated. “You are quicker than I thought. You’ve got him safely away, have you? Well, I told you a comfortable sanatorium would be a good idea.”
“Yes, you did.” T. Tembarom hesitated, seeming to be thinking it over again. “That’s so.” He laid his pipe aside because it had gone out.
He suddenly sat down at the table, putting his elbows on it and his face in his hands, with a harried effect of wanting to think it over in a sort of withdrawal from his immediate surroundings. This was as it should be. His Yankee readiness had deserted him altogether.
“By Jove! you are nervous!” Palliser commented. “It’s not surprising, though. I can sympathize with you.” With a markedly casual air he himself sat down and drew his documents toward him. “Let us talk of something else,” he said. He preferred to be casual and incidental, if he were allowed. It was always better to suggest things and let them sink in until people saw the advantage of considering them and you. To manage a business matter without open argument or too frank a display of weapons was at once more comfortable and in better taste.