'I don't doubt it. Calverly, let me tell you--never forget this--a man who hesitates for one instant to account freely, fully for money is never to be trusted.'
'Do? Everything! Just what I'm doing with Charlie Waterhouse, for one thing--insist on a full statement.'
'They framed a letter--or McGibbon framed it--demanding an accounting, 'in order that further legal measures may not become necessary.' McGibbon said he would send it early in the morning, registered, and with a special-delivery stamp. 'Later, they decided to add emphasis by means of a telegram demanding immediate consideration of the letter.
Late that night, when Humphrey came upstairs into a pitch-dark living-room and switched on the light, he discovered a pale youth sitting stiffly on a window-seat wide-awake, eyes staring nervously, hands clasped.
'Well, what on earth?' said he, in mild surprise.
'Oh, Hump, I've wondered what you'd think--leaving you in the lurch with all that work!
'I can manage. Get some help from one of the students. And Gertie Wombast is usually available---- Oh, say; how about the old man? Did you tell him what's what?'
Henry's burning eyes stared out of that white face. Suddenly--so suddenly that Humphrey himself started--he sprang up, cried out; 'No! No! No!' and rushed into his bedroom, slamming the door after him.
Humphrey looked soberly at the door, shook his head, filled his pipe.
That 'No! No! No!' still rang in his ears It was a cry of pain.
Humphrey had suffered; but he had never known a turbulence of the sort that every now and then seemed to tear Henry to pieces.
'Must be fierce,' he thought. 'But it works up as well as down. Runs to extremes. Creative faculty, I suppose. Well, he's got it--that's all. And he's only a kid. Thing to do's to stand by and try to steady him up a little when he comes out of it.'
And the philosophical Humphrey went to bed.
At noon, no word had come from Uncle Arthur. Henry, all the morning, had flitted back and forth between McGibbon's rear office and the telegraph office in the 'depot.'
At twelve-thirty, they sent a peremptory message, demanding a reply by three o'clock. An ultimatum.
The reply came unexpectedly, with startling effect, at twenty-five minutes past two, requesting Henry to come directly into his uncle's Chicago office.