“What do you want?” asked Lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair as Rogers entered his room, and pushing the door shut with his foot, without rising.
Rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat with his hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed towards Lapham. “I want to know what you are going to do,” he answered with sufficient self-possession.
“I’ll tell you, first, what I’ve done,” said Lapham. “I’ve been to Dubuque, and I’ve found out all about that milling property you turned in on me. Did you know that the G.L. & P. had leased the P.Y. & X.?”
“I some suspected that it might.”
“Did you know it when you turned the property in on me? Did you know that the G.L. & P. wanted to buy the mills?”
“I presumed the road would give a fair price for them,” said Rogers, winking his eyes in outward expression of inwardly blinking the point.
“You lie,” said Lapham, as quietly as if correcting him in a slight error; and Rogers took the word with equal sangfroid. “You knew the road wouldn’t give a fair price for the mills. You knew it would give what it chose, and that I couldn’t help myself, when you let me take them. You’re a thief, Milton K. Rogers, and you stole money I lent you.” Rogers sat listening, as if respectfully considering the statements. “You knew how I felt about that old matter—or my wife did; and that I wanted to make it up to you, if you felt any way badly used. And you took advantage of it. You’ve got money out of me, in the first place, on securities that wa’n’t worth thirty-five cents on the dollar, and you’ve let me in for this thing, and that thing, and you’ve bled me every time. And all I’ve got to show for it is a milling property on a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it wants to, as dry as it pleases. And you want to know what I’m going to do? I’m going to squeeze you. I’m going to sell these collaterals of yours,”—he touched a bundle of papers among others that littered his desk—“and I’m going to let the mills go for what they’ll fetch. I ain’t going to fight the G.L. & P.”
Lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his visitor, who sat wholly unmoved.
“There are some parties,” he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring Lapham’s words, as if they had been an outburst against some third person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his condemnation—“there are some English parties who have been making inquiries in regard to those mills.”
“I guess you’re lying, Rogers,” said Lapham, without looking round.
“Well, all that I have to ask is that you will not act hastily.”
“I see you don’t think I’m in earnest!” cried Lapham, facing fiercely about. “You think I’m fooling, do you?” He struck his bell, and “William,” he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the bundle of securities in a large envelope, “take these down to Gallop & Paddock’s, in State Street, right away. Now go!” he said to Rogers, when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to his desk.
Rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand. He was not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was impartial. He wore the air of a man who was ready to return to business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted. “Then I understand,” he said, “that you will take no action in regard to the mills till I have seen the parties I speak of.”
Lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of Rogers in silence. “I wonder what you’re up to,” he said at last; “I should like to know.” But as Rogers made no sign of gratifying his curiosity, and treated this last remark of Lapham’s as of the irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, “You bring me a party that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I’ll talk to you. But don’t you come here with any man of straw. And I’ll give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again.”
Once more Lapham turned his back, and Rogers, after looking thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour.
Lapham was not again heard from, as Walker phrased it, during the afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed swearing, penetrated to the outer office. Somewhat earlier than the usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat on and his overcoat buttoned about him. He said briefly to his boy, “William, I shan’t be back again this afternoon,” and then went to Miss Dewey and left a number of letters on her table to be copied, and went out. Nothing had been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself through those who saw him go out.
That evening as he sat down with his wife
