Saying which, the junior partner’s wife pulled her veil down and swept out of the office with the general air of a deceived wife in a play.
"Huh! it’d naturally be thought I’d know enough not to make such an egregious ass of myself as to show her that telegram!" growled the senior partner to himself. "There’ll be all kinds of a bobbery around here this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter proves to be something that Barlock wouldn’t want his wife to know about—and I’ve no doubt now that it will prove just that way, the young idiot!—why, he’ll be sulky with me, and there’ll be little or no work done on those new cases, and—oh, it’s a devil of a mess all around, that’s what it is!"
For all of which, however, the senior partner had his work to do, and he pitched in and was up to his ears in it until about half-past 3, when the junior partner’s wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of ominous calm, arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome, haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great mass of white pompadour hair and an expression of unyielding austerity. The junior partner’s wife and her mother replied to the senior partner’s courteous greetings with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint belief that he was in league with the absent junior partner in his nefarious doings, or that he was at any rate attempting to shield the young man.
"Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam?" the senior partner politely asked the junior partner’s wife’s mother.
"I am quite cool enough, thank you," said the junior partner’s wife’s mother, snappily.
"Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water?" he asked the junior partner’s wife.
"You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty," she replied in a tone which seemed to convey the idea as plainly as words that she feared he might put something in the water that wouldn’t do her any good.
The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three sat in unbroken silence for fully fifteen minutes, when the sound of a blustery, cheerful voice was heard in the office boy’s anteroom, and a few seconds later a tall, broad-shouldered, frank-faced young man entered the office. When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms extended.