The frown on Victor’s face deepened. With a curt nod to the clerk he walked outside.
“By George, it wasn’t much advantage to me when Blakelets steered this bunch of great depending-upon-themselves fellows up to our front door,” he thought, almost savagely. “Wish he hadn’t stopped until they were a thousand miles away. Everything has gone wrong; dandy motor boat trip knocked in the head, and here I am—— Oh, gee, but it does make me tired.”
Then Victor stopped short, struck by a sudden idea which made his eyes fairly flash.
“I do wonder, now, if this scrawl and all that howl about being broke is just a big, silly bluff. Maybe the Indian is taking in the show and expects me to come chasing over after him. Well, I simply won’t do it—that’s all.”
Victor’s jaws snapped together. Within a few minutes his mind was made up.
“I’ll skip over to Uncle Ralph’s,” he muttered. “Maybe Phil Malone is there.”
Captain Bunderley, being a bachelor, employed Phil as housekeeper and general utility man.
In half an hour Victor reached his uncle’s residence, which stood back on a wide avenue. A graveled path led across a fine lawn. Tastefully arranged flower beds and little cedars planted here and there gave quite an air of elegance to the surroundings. Over the pillared porch clinging vines swayed in the wind, the green leaves thickly interspersed with those of a golden and ruddy hue.
One glance at the tightly closed mansion was enough to convince Victor that his trouble had been for nothing. An air of melancholy silence seemed to brood over the place. Dry autumn leaves bestrewed the porch and steps, every now and then apparently becoming endowed with life as they rustled away for a few feet.
Impatiently Victor bounded up the steps.