"There you are, Lawson," cried Addicks. "There's plenty to assure Rogers we'll do what we agree to."
Fool that I was, I did not see his game. No one ever does see Addicks' game till it is too late, for no one but a moral idiot would play the game Addicks plays, and, thank heaven, moral idiots are so rare in life that it is not worth while figuring out the formula from which they work.
By one o'clock I was at Mr. Rogers' office at 26 Broadway.
He greeted me warmly. "Well, Lawson, did you get things finished up all right?"
"Mr. Rogers, I have a most humiliating admission to——"
"Hold up right there. Cut out all explanations and excuses. Have you brought those bonds as you agreed to, or not?" His eyes were snapping and shifting from one color to another.
"No, I have not got them."
"Why not?"
Had I been a woman I should have clapped my hands to my ears and screamed, so sudden and bomb-like came those two words.
"He had used some of them and has only $904,000 on hand."
"Only $904,000!"
It is impossible to convey the concentrated scorn and sarcasm Mr. Rogers infused into these words, and he continued to glare at me for fully a minute, his eyes as searching as x-rays. When that glare shifted I had a presentiment it would leave me forever a stranger to him, and I made up my mind to turn on my heel and leave his office without a word.