Part 30 (1/2)

”Well, I don't know what's come to him,” Mollie complained. ”Who does he think he is? Did anybody leave him a fortune over night? It was the Donovan boy.”

A few minutes after Neil's encounter with Mollie, when Mr. Theodore Burr admitted him listlessly after his third knock at Judge Saxon's door, he could see no evidence that any one had left the Donovan boy a fortune over night, but did note a change in him. There was something appealingly grave and sedate about his face, as if a part of its youth, the freakish, unconquerable laughter of it, that had defied and antagonized Mr. Burr, were gone forever, burned away, somehow, in a night. It was a look Mr. Burr was to grow well used to in the next few months. Perhaps the unaccountable affection he was to feel for the boy in the course of them was born then and there.

Neil emerged from the Judge's private office after a briefer talk than usual, and the Judge did not escort him to the door in his accustomed, friendly fas.h.i.+on. Mr. Burr did, and made him clumsy and unwonted confidences there.

”The old man's not quite fit to-day,” he said. ”I ought to have told you. It's a poor time to get anything out of him. Been shut up there by himself doping out something. Won't say two words to me.”

”Then he must be in a bad way, Theodore,” said the boy, with the ghost of his old, mocking smile, which Mr. Burr somehow did not find annoying at all.

”Look here, Neil,” he surprised himself by saying, ”I like you. I always did. You deserve a square deal. You're too good for the Brady gang.

You're too good for the town. If there was anything I could do for you----”

”Maybe there is, Theodore,” the boy turned in the corridor to say.

”Cheer up. You'll have a chance to see. I'm coming to work for the Judge, I start in next week.”

”But the Judge turned you down.” Mr. Burr's brain struggled with the problem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but too evidently not achieving it. ”The Judge likes you, too, but he couldn't take you in if he wanted to. He talked of it, but gave it up. He'd be afraid to. Everard----”

”I start in next week,” repeated Mr. Donovan.

”But what did you say to him?” demanded Mr. Burr. ”What did he say to you? How did you dare to ask him again?”

”I didn't ask him. Don't worry, Theodore. I haven't been trying any black magic on the Judge. I don't know any. Maybe I'll learn some. I'm going to learn a good deal. I've got to. n.o.body knows how much. Even the Judge don't know. I'm coming to work for the Judge, that's all, but I didn't ask him.” Mr. Burr, listening incredulously, did not know that this was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the Judge and more, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determined young man, the secret of all his success. He gave it away openly, and without pride:

”I just told him so.”

Neil started in the next week. If Mr. Burr watched his young a.s.sociate somewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who had changed the course of his life in a five-minute interview would do something equally spectacular next, and if the Judge, who had said to him at last, ”Well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, so you get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking s.h.i.+p, and remember I told you so. And I'll tell you something else. It will be poor pickings here for all of us, and I'm sorry, but I'm the sorriest for you,” was inclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with a look that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth in his kind, near-sighted eyes, this was only at first.

Colonel Everard, returning a few weeks later from one of his sudden, unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to his attorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretended not to.

”Who are you?” he inquired, ”the office boy?”

”Just about that, sir,” the young man admitted, as if he had no higher ambition, but the Judge, entering the room with more evidence of beginning the day with the strength that the day required, than he had been showing lately in his carriage and look, put a casual hand on the boy's shoulder, and kept it there.

”The last time we discussed enlarging my office force, you didn't advocate it, Everard,” he said rather formally.

”So you aren't discussing it with me now?”

”Do you think you'd better discuss it?”

”Do you?”

”I think you are in no position to discuss it. You've been recently furnished with much more important material to discuss. I haven't seen you since your garden party, have I?”

”No.” Both men seemed to have forgotten the boy's existence, but now the Colonel recalled it, and apparently without annoyance, and flashed a disarming smile at him, giving up gracefully, as he always did if he was forced to give up at all. ”Well, you're right, Hugh. You're always right. Do as you please. But this boy's got a temper of his own and--quite a flow of speech. Runs in his family, evidently. Properly handled, these are a.s.sets, but----”

”I'm sorry, sir,” Neil found himself stammering. ”I shouldn't have spoken to you as I did that day. I'm sorry.”

”Next time be sure of your facts.” The voice was friendly, almost paternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betraying moment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in the Colonel's eyes. Few enemies of his had been permitted to see it so clearly. It was a triumph for Neil, if a barren one. ”Be very sure.”

”I will, sir,” said Neil deliberately, but very courteously. Then the Colonel disappeared into the private office with his arm about his trusted attorney's shoulders, and the young man for whose sake his attorney had openly defied him for the first time in years began to empty the office waste-baskets.