of expectation. Any day now he might read of the granting of the Apex charter: Moffatt had assured him it would “go through” before the close of the month. But the announcement did not appear, and after what seemed to Ralph a decent lapse of time he telephoned to ask for news. Moffatt was away, and when he came back a few days later he answered Ralph’s enquiries evasively, with an edge of irritation in his voice. The same day Ralph received a letter from his lawyer, who had been reminded by Mrs. Marvell’s representatives that the latest date agreed on for the execution of the financial agreement was the end of the following week.
Ralph, alarmed, betook himself at once to the Ararat, and his first glimpse of Moffatt’s round common face and fastidiously dressed person gave him an immediate sense of reassurance. He felt that under the circle of baldness on top of that carefully brushed head lay the solution of every monetary problem that could beset the soul of man. Moffatt’s voice had recovered its usual cordial note, and the warmth of his welcome dispelled Ralph’s last apprehension.
“Why, yes, everything’s going along first-rate. They thought they’d hung us up last week—but they haven’t. There may be another week’s delay; but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the Fourth.”
An office-boy came in with a name on a slip of paper, and Moffatt looked at his watch and held out a hearty hand. “Glad you came. Of course I’ll keep you posted…No, this way…Look in again…” and he steered Ralph out by another door.
July came, and passed into its second week. Ralph’s lawyer had obtained a postponement from the other side, but Undine’s representatives had given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the first of August. Ralph telephoned once or twice to Moffatt, receiving genially-worded assurances that everything was “going their way”; but he felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office, and let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension. Finally one afternoon Henley Fairford, coming back from town (which Ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over Sunday), brought word that the Apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter. It was useless to attempt to reach Moffatt on Sunday, and Ralph wore on as he could through the succeeding twenty-four hours. Clare Van Degen had come down to stay with her youngest boy, and in the afternoon she and Ralph took the two children for a sail. A light breeze brightened the waters of the Sound, and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out toward the sunset, coming back at last, under a failing breeze, as the summer sky passed from blue to a translucid green and then into the accumulating greys of twilight.
As they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the darkening lawn, a sense of security descended again on Ralph. He could not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of any impending evil, and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him.
The next morning, he and Clare travelled up to town together, and at the station he put her in the motor which was to take her to Long Island, and hastened down to Moffatt’s office. When he arrived he was told that Moffatt was “engaged,” and he had to wait for nearly half an hour in the outer office, where, to the steady click of the type-writer and the spasmodic buzzing of the telephone, his thoughts again began their restless circlings. Finally the inner door opened, and he found himself in the sanctuary. Moffatt was seated behind his desk, examining another little crystal vase somewhat like the one he had shown Ralph a few weeks earlier. As his visitor entered, he held it up against the light, revealing on its dewy sides an incised design as frail as the shadow of grass-blades on water.
“Ain’t she a peach?” He put the toy down and reached across the desk to shake hands. “Well, well,” he went on, leaning back in his chair, and pushing out his lower lip in a half-comic pout, “they’ve got us in the neck this time and no mistake. Seen this morning’s Radiator? I don’t know how the thing leaked out—but the reformers somehow got a smell of the scheme, and whenever they get swishing round something’s bound to get spilt.”
He talked gaily, genially, in his roundest tones and with his easiest gestures; never had he conveyed a completer sense of unhurried power; but Ralph noticed for the first time the crow’s-feet about his eyes, and the sharpness of the contrast between the white of his forehead and the redness of the fold of neck above his collar.
“Do you mean to say it’s not going through?”
“Not this time, anyhow. We’re high and dry.”
Something seemed to snap in Ralph’s head, and he sat down in the nearest chair. “Has the common stock dropped a lot?”
“Well, you’ve got to lean over to see it.” Moffatt pressed his finger-tips together and added thoughtfully: “But it’s THERE all right. We’re bound to get our charter in the end.”
“What do you call the end?”
“Oh, before the Day of Judgment, sure: next year, I guess.”
“Next year?” Ralph flushed. “What earthly good will that do me?”
“I don’t say it’s as pleasant as driving your best girl home by moonlight. But that’s how it is. And the stuff’s safe enough any way—I’ve told you that right along.”
“But you’ve told me all along I could count on a rise before August. You knew I had to have the money now.”
“I knew you WANTED to have the money now; and so did I, and several of my friends. I put you onto it because it was the only thing in sight likely to give you the return you wanted.”
“You ought at least to have warned me of the risk!”
“Risk? I don’t call it much of a risk to lie back in your chair and wait another few months for fifty thousand to drop into your lap. I tell you the thing’s as safe as a bank.”
“How do I know it is? You’ve misled me about it from the first.”
Moffatt’s face grew dark red to the forehead: for the first time in their acquaintance Ralph saw him on the verge of anger. “Well, if you get stuck so do I. I’m in it a good deal deeper than you. That’s about the best guarantee I can give; unless you won’t take my word for that either.” To control himself Moffatt spoke with extreme deliberation, separating his syllables like a machine cutting something into even lengths.
Ralph listened through a cloud of confusion; but he saw the madness of offending Moffatt, and tried to take a more conciliatory tone. “Of course I take your word for it. But I can’t—I simply can’t afford to lose…”
“You ain’t going to lose: I don’t believe you’ll even have to put up any margin. It’s THERE safe enough, I tell you…”
