“You’ve seen him, and you know him?”
“Perfectly weel. I kept ma eye on him when he didn’t dream that anybody was nigh him.”
“And what you told me in the City you are prepared to stand by?”
The Scot put out his big hands, saying:
“Mr Statham, what I’ve told ye I stick to.”
“Duncan,” said the great man, clasping the hand offered him. “You were my friend once—my best friend—and you will be so again.”
“If ye’ll let me be,” answered the other warmly. Statham could read a man’s innermost character at a glance. He was seldom, if ever, mistaken. He looked into Macgregor’s eyes, and saw truth and friendship there.
As Levi watched the two men his lip curled slightly. He was a cynic, and did not approve of this outburst of sentimentality on the part of his master. Samuel Statham, the man of millions and the controller of colossal interests, should, he declared within himself, be above such an exhibition of his own heart.
“Is it not strange,” remarked Statham, as though speaking to himself, “that you should actually have been engaged in my works without knowing that it was the head of the firm who was indebted to you for his life?”
“Ay, the world’s only a sma’ space, after all,” Duncan replied. “I was apprenticed to the firm, but soon got sick of a humdrum life. So I went out to South America to try ma fortune, an’ we met. After the war I went to Caracas, and then back to Glasgie to the old firm, where I’ve been ever since. I thought that when the new company took the place over I’d be discharged as too old. Indeed, more than once Mr Rolfe has hinted at it.”