“This is Paret, of my office.”
“I know,” said Mr. Gorse, and nodded toward me. I was impressed by the felicity with which a cartoonist of the Pilot had once caricatured him by the use of curved lines. The circle of the heavy eyebrows ended at the wide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy shoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discerned about him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across his forehead; even his polished porphyry eyes were constructed on some curvilinear principle, and never seemed to focus. It might be said of Mr. Gorse that he had an overwhelming impersonality. One could never be quite sure that one's words reached the mark.
In spite of the intimacy which I knew existed between them, in my presence at least Mr. Gorse's manner was little different with Mr. Watling than it was with other men. Mr. Wading did not seem to mind. He pulled up a chair close to the desk and began, without any preliminaries, to explain his errand.
“It's about the Ribblevale affair,” he said. “You know we have a suit.”
Gorse nodded.
“We've got to get at the books, Miller,—that's all there is to it. I told you so the other day. Well, we've found out a way, I think.”
He thrust his hand in his pocket, while the railroad attorney remained impassive, and drew out the draft of the bill. Mr. Gorse read it, then read it over again, and laid it down in front of him.
“Well,” he said.
“I want to put that through both houses and have the governor's signature to it by the end of the week.”
“It seems a little raw, at first sight, Theodore,” said Mr. Gorse, with the suspicion of a smile.