"I'm honestly sorry,"--began Wheaton. "I had no idea you were depending on me. You ought to have known that I couldn't betray Mr. Porter."

"You ought to be sorry," said Margrave dolefully. "But, look here, Jim, I don't believe you're going to do me up on this."

"I'm not going to do anybody up; but I don't see what I can do to help you."

"Well, I do. You gave me to understand that you were buying this stuff yourself. You still got what you had?"

Margrave knew from the secretary of the company that Wheaton owned one hundred shares. He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at Wheaton appealingly.

"Yes," Wheaton answered reluctantly. He knew now why he had been summoned.

"Now, how many shares have you, Jim?" with increasing amiability of tone and manner.

"Just what I bought in the beginning; one hundred shares."

Margrave took a pad from his desk and added one hundred to a short column of figures. He made the footing and regarded the total with careless interest before looking up.

"How much do you want for that, Jim?"

"To tell the truth, Mr. Margrave, I don't know that I want to sell it."

"Now, Jim, you ain't going to hold me up on this? You've got me into a pretty mess, and I hope you're not going to keep on pushing me in."

Wheaton crossed and recrossed his legs. There was Porter and there was Margrave. To whom did he owe allegiance? He resented the way in which Margrave had taken him to task; he could not see that he had been culpable, unless as against Porter. Yet Porter had told him nothing; if Porter had treated him with a little more frankness, he certainly would never have mentioned Traction to Margrave.

"What I have wouldn't do you any good," he said finally.

"But it might do me some harm! Now, you don't want these shares, Jim.

You're ent.i.tled to a profit, and I'll pay you a fair price."

"I can't do anything to hurt Mr. Porter," said Wheaton. He remembered just how the drawing-room at the Porters' looked, and the kindness and frankness of Evelyn Porter's eyes.

"Yes, but you've got a duty to me," he stormed, getting red in the face again. "You can bet your life that if it hadn't been for you, I'd never have been in this pickle. Come along now, Jim, I've got a lot of our railroad people to go in on this. They depend absolutely on my judgment.

I'm a ruined man if I fail to show up at the meeting to-morrow with a majority of these shares. It won't make any difference to Billy Porter whether he wins out or not. He's got plenty of irons in the fire. I don't know as a matter of fact that I need these shares; but I want to be on the safe side. Does Porter know what you've got?"

Wheaton shook his head.

"Then what's the harm in selling them where you've got a chance, even if you wasn't under any obligations to me? If you didn't know until I told you that the old man was still on the hunt for this stuff, I don't see that you're bound to wait for him to come around and ask you to sell to him. How much shall I make it for?" He opened a drawer and pulled out his check-book.

"They tell me Porter's pretty sick," Margrave continued, running the stubs of the check-book through his thick thumb and forefinger. "Billy isn't as young as he used to be. Very likely he'll never know you had any Traction stock," he added significantly. "How much shall I make it for, Jim?"

Wheaton walked over to the window and looked down into the street, while Margrave watched him with pen in hand.

"How much shall I make it for?" he asked more sharply.

"You can't make it for anything, Mr. Margrave, and I want to say that I'm very much disappointed in the way you've tried to get it from me."

Margrave swung around on him with an oath. But Wheaton went on, speaking carefully.

"I can't imagine that the few shares of stock I hold can be of real importance in deciding the control of this company. I don't say I won't give you these shares, but I can't do it now."

Margrave's face grew red and purple as Wheaton walked toward the door.

"Maybe you think you can wring more out of Porter than you can out of me. But, by G.o.d, I'll take this out of you and out of him, too, if I go broke doing it."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE KEY TO A DILEMMA

Evelyn had telephoned to Mrs. Whipple of her father's illness in terms which allayed alarm; but when the afternoon paper referred to it ominously, the good woman set out through the first snowstorm of the season for the Porter house, carrying her campaign outfit, as the general called it, in a suit-case. Mrs. Whipple's hopeful equanimity was very welcome to Evelyn, who suffered as women do when denied the privilege of ministering to their sick and forced to see their natural office usurped by others. Mrs. Whipple brought a breath of May into the atmosphere of the house. She found ways of dulling the edge of Evelyn's anxiety and idleness; she even found things for Evelyn to do, and busied herself disposing of inquiries at the door and telephone to save Evelyn the trouble. In Evelyn's sitting-room Mrs. Whipple talked of clothes and made it seem a great favor for the girl to drag out several new gowns for inspection,--a kind of first view, she called it; and she sighed over them and said they were more perfect than perfect lyrics and would appeal to a larger audience.

She chose one of the lyrics of black chiffon and lace, with a high collar and half sleeves and forced Evelyn to put it on; and when they sat down to dinner together she planned a portrait of Evelyn in the same gown, which Chase or Sargent must paint. She managed the talk tactfully, without committing the error of trying to ignore the sick man upstairs.

She made his illness seem incidental merely, and with a bright side, in that it gave her a chance to spend a few days at the Hill. Then she went on:

"Warry and Mr. Saxton were at the house last night. It's delightful to see men so devoted to each other as they are; and it's great fun to hear them banter each other. I didn't know that Mr. Saxton could be funny, but in his quiet way he says the drollest things!"

"I thought he was very serious," said Evelyn. "I rarely see him, but when I do, he flatters me by talking about books. He thinks I'm literary!"

"I can't imagine it."

Evelyn laughed.

"Oh, thanks! I'm making progress!"

"It's funny," Mrs. Whipple continued, "the way he takes care of Warry.

The general says Mr. Saxton is a Newfoundland and Warry a fox terrier.

Warry's at work again, and I suppose we have Mr. Saxton's influence to thank."

"A man like that could do a great deal for Warry," said Evelyn. "If Warry doesn't settle down pretty soon he'll lose his chance." Then, her father coming into her thoughts, she added irrelevantly: "Mr. Thompson will probably come home. Mr. Wheaton telephoned that the directors had wired him."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Whipple, looking at the girl quickly,--"so much responsibility,--I suppose it would be hardly fair to Mr. Wheaton--"

"I suppose not," said Evelyn.

"It's just the same in business as it is in the army," continued Mrs.

Whipple, who referred everything back to the military establishment.

"The bugle's got to blow every morning whether the colonel's sick or not. I suppose the bank keeps open just the same. When a thing's once well started it has a way of running on, whether anybody attends to it or not."

"But you couldn't get father to believe that," said Evelyn, smiling in recollection of her father's life-long refutation of this philosophy.

"No indeed," a.s.sented Mrs. Whipple. "But in the army there is a good deal to make a man humble. If he gets transferred from one end of the land to another, somebody else does the work he has been doing, and usually you wouldn't know the difference. The individual is really extinguished; they all sign their reports in exactly the same place, and one signature is just as good at Washington as another." This was a favorite line of discourse with Mrs. Whipple; she had reduced her army experience to a philosophy, which she was fond of presenting on any occasion.

The maid brought Evelyn a card before they had finished coffee.

"It's Mr. Wheaton," she explained; "I asked him to come. Father was greatly troubled about some matter which he said must not be neglected.