Wilson so far forgot his pose that he looked up in a startled sort of way and began to study Miller's smoke-wrapped profile.
“You say they are not—have not been counting on my company to—to buy their land?”
“Why, no,” said Miller, in accents well resembling those of slow and genuine surprise. “Why, you have not shown the slightest interest in the matter since the day you made the loan, and naturally they ceased to think you wanted the land. The only reason I called was that the note is payable to-day, and—”
“Oh yes, by Jove! that was careless of me. The interest is due. I knew it would be all right, and I had no idea you would bother to run down for that. Why, my boy, we could have drawn for it, you know.”
Miller smiled inwardly, as he looked calmly and fixedly through his smoke into the unsuspecting visage upturned to him.
“But the note itself is payable to-day,” he said, closely on the alert for a facial collapse; “and, while you or I might take up a paper for twenty-five thousand dollars through a bank, old-fashioned people like Mr. and Mrs. Bishop would feel safer to have it done by an agent. That's why I came.”
Miller, in silent satisfaction, saw the face of his antagonist fall to pieces like an artificial flower suddenly shattered.
“Pay the note?” gasped Wilson. “Why—”
Miller puffed at his cigar and gazed at his victim as if slightly surprised over the assumption that his clients had not, all along, intended to avail themselves of that condition in their contract.
“You mean that the Bishops are ready to—” Wilson began again on another breath—“to pay us the twenty-five thousand dollars?”