Part 3 (1/2)
”I wish to speak with Mr. Melvin, personally.”
”Mr. Melvin is not in his office at the present moment,” came the reply over the telephone. ”Who is it, please?”
”This is Stephen Langdon, and I wanted to speak--”
He was interrupted by the person at the other end of the wire, who uttered an exclamation of surprise, followed by these words:
”Why, Mr. Langdon, Mr. Melvin has gone to your house to see you, as we supposed. A telephone call came from your residence, and he departed at once, saying that he would not return to the office to-day.”
”The devil he did!” exclaimed the banker, as he hung up the receiver.
Then, he leaned back in his chair and smoked hard for a moment, with the nearest approach to a frown that had appeared on his face during all that exciting afternoon; and he did another thing unusual with him: he spoke aloud his thoughts, with no one but himself for listener.
”I'll be blowed if I thought Patricia would go as far as that!” was what he said. ”If she hasn't sent for Malcolm Melvin to draw those papers she hinted at, I'm a Dutchman! By Jove, I begin to think that Duncan was right after all, and that he is up against it in this little play we have had this afternoon. But I hadn't an idea that my girl would go quite so far. H'm! It looks as if it is up to me to spoil her interview with Melvin, if I can get there in time.”
Five minutes later, he left the banking-house, paused at a letter-box long enough to drop in the correspondence he had signed, and then went swiftly onward to the subway, by which he was conveyed rapidly to the vicinity of his home. Somewhat later, when he entered the sumptuously appointed library, he discovered precisely what he had expected to find: his lawyer, Malcolm Melvin, and his daughter Patricia were facing each other across the table, the former having before him several sheets of paper, which were already covered with the penciled notes and memoranda he had evidently been engaged in making.
Langdon stopped in the middle of the floor and looked at them. For the first time since the beginning of the interview with his daughter at the office, he realized that she had been in deadly earnest at its close. He understood, suddenly, how deeply her pride had been wounded, and he knew that she was enough like himself to resent it with all the power she could command.
”Since when, Melvin, have you ceased to be my attorney!” he inquired sharply, determined to put an end to the scene, at once.
The elderly lawyer and the young woman had raised their heads from earnest conversation when Stephen Langdon entered the room. The lawyer, with a startled, although amused, expression on his professional face; the daughter with a cold smile and an almost imperceptible nod of her shapely, Junoesque head. But her black eyes snapped with something very nearly approaching defiance, and she replied, before Melvin could do so:
”Do not misunderstand the situation, please,” she said, quickly. And her father noticed with deep misgiving that she omitted the customary term of endearment between them. ”Mr. Melvin is here at my request, and because he is your attorney. I have been instructing him how to draw the papers that are to accompany the collateral offered for your loan, and the bonus that goes with it; and just how those papers are to be used, in accordance with the discussion between you and me, at the bank, this afternoon. I told you, then, to inform Mr. Duncan that you would meet his requirements. Later, when I realized that he had overheard us--”
”What's the matter with you, Pat?” demanded the father, interrupting her with a touch of anger. ”Have you lost your head, entirely?”
”No,” she replied, with utter calmness; ”I have only lost my Dad. I went down to his office this afternoon to see him, and I left him there. Just now, I have been instructing Mr. Melvin concerning the particulars of the agreement I want drawn and signed in the transaction that is to take place between you and Roderick Duncan, in which I am, personally, so deeply concerned, in which I am to figure as the collateral security.”
The old man stared at his daughter, with an expression that had made many a Wall-street financier turn pale with apprehension. It was a grim visage that she saw then--hard and set, stern and unrelenting, and many a strong man had surrendered to Stephen Langdon, frightened by the aspect of it. Not so this daughter of his. She met his gaze unflinchingly and calmly, without a change in her outward demeanor.
After a moment, Langdon turned with a shrug toward the lawyer.
”Melvin,” he said, ”how many years have you been my attorney?”
”Fourteen, I think, Mr. Langdon,” was the smiling reply. One would have thought that the man of law found something highly amusing in this incident.
”About that--yes. Well, do you see that door?” He half-turned and indicated the entrance he had just used. ”Melvin, I want you to pick up those papers and tell John, outside, to give you your hat; then I want you to get out of here as quick as G.o.d'll let you. If you don't, our relations are severed from this moment. And if you complete the draft of those papers, without my permission, or submit them to any person whatever, without my having seen them first, I will have another attorney to replace you, Monday morning. Go right along now.
You needn't answer me. If you don't want my business, all you've got to do is to say so. If you do want it, you'll come mighty near doing what I have told you to do, just now.”
The lawyer, quietly, but with dignity, rose from his chair, folded the papers, placed them in an inner pocket of his coat, bowed to Patricia and then to her father, and without a word pa.s.sed from the room, closing the door quietly behind him; but before he quite accomplished this last act, the clear even tones of the girl called after him:
”I am sure, Mr. Melvin, that we had quite concluded our conference. I will ask you please to draw those papers as I have directed. You may submit copies to Mr. Langdon at the time you bring the originals to me.”
He did not answer, for there was no occasion to do so, and a second later Stephen Langdon and his daughter were alone together for the second time that afternoon.
”Now, Patricia,” he said, turning toward her, with his feet wide apart and his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, ”what in blazes is this all about?”
His daughter replied coldly and precisely:
”I have merely been dictating to your lawyer the substance of the conditions I wish to have embodied in the papers that are to complete the transaction we have discussed at your office. I selected Mr.
Melvin because I knew him to be in your confidence, and I surmised that you would prefer that the condition of affairs under which you are now struggling, which forces you to borrow twenty-million dollars, should not be made known to an outsider.”