I suddenly remembered that he had not told me how many bonds he had on hand. Just a ray of hope in the fog.
"How many free bonds have we to offer, Addicks, suppose he is willing to overlook this ugly piece of trickery?" I asked anxiously.
"I'm not quite sure," he answered, "but I can find out from the books." He rang for Miller, his right-hand man, the dummy treasurer of the Bay State Company, and said to him: "Harry, Mr. Lawson has got mixed up about the bonds. He thought we had a million and a half. You remember we've pledged some in the loans. Just how many have we now on hand?"
"Harry" looked it up and said: "Just $904,000 worth."
"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.
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."
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. I felt that he was in the right, and that if I were in his place I'd glare, too.
Suddenly the expression changed. He said peremptorily: "Lawson, get on the first train for Philadelphia and bring back those agreements executed and the $904,000 instead of the $1,500,000."
"Mr. Rogers," I began, but he stopped me with an imperative gesture.