human
You, Victor? she said, coming quickly to meet him.
gpt
Murray Grislow said you had gone down to the Buckskin camps and wouldn't be back for two or three days!
human
Grizzy told the truth--as it stood a few hours ago, he admitted.
gpt
But I changed my mind and came back. How is Steve this evening?
human
He is quite comfortable, more comfortable than he has been at all since the wound began to heal. I have been reading him to sleep, and when the night nurse came I ran down to get a breath of fresh air in the open.
gpt
No, you didn't come down for that reason, Brouillard amended gravely.
human
You came to meet me.
gpt
Did I? she asked.
human
What makes you think that?
gpt
I don't think; I _know_. You called me, and I heard you and came at once.
human
How absurd! she protested.
gpt
I knew, or thought I knew, that you were miles away, over in the Buckskin; and how could I call you?
human
It is exactly twenty minutes since I left my office. What were you doing twenty minutes ago?
gpt
As if I could tell! I don't believe I have looked at a clock or a watch all evening. After Stevie had his supper I read to him--one of the creepy Kipling stories that he is so fond of. You would say that 'Bimi' would be just about the last thing in the world to put anybody to sleep, wouldn't you? But Stevie dropped off, and I think I must have lost myself for a minute or two, because the next thing I knew the nurse was in the room.
human
I know what happened, said Brouillard, speaking as soberly as if he were stating a mathematical certainty.
gpt
You left that room up-stairs and came to me. I didn't see you, but I heard you as plainly as I can hear you now. You spoke to me and called me by name.
human
What did I say? Can you remember the words?
gpt
Indeed I can. The room was perfectly still, and I was working at my desk. Suddenly, and without any warning, I heard your voice saying: 'Victor, you said you would come if I needed you: I need you now.'
human
You have been overwrought about something, or maybe you are just plain tired. I didn't say or even think anything like that; or if I did, it must have been the other I, or one of the others, that Herr Freiborg writes about--and I don't believe in. This I that you are talking to doesn't remember anything about it.
gpt
You are standing me off, he declared.
human
You are in trouble of some sort, and you are trying to hide it from me.
gpt
No, not exactly trouble; only a little worry.
human
All right, call it worry if you like and share it with me. What is it?
gpt
I think you know without being told--or you will know when I say that to-day was the day when the big debt to the bank became due. I am afraid we have finally lost the 'Little Susan.' That is one of the worries and the other I've been trying to call silly. I don't know what has become of father--as if he weren't old enough to go and come without telling me every move he makes!
human
Your father isn't at home?
gpt
No; he hasn't been here since nine o'clock this morning. Murray Grislow saw him going into the Metropole about one o'clock, but nobody that I have been able to reach by 'phone seems to have seen him after that.
human
I can bring the record down to two o'clock, was the quick reply.
gpt
He ate with me at Bongras's, and afterward I walked with him as far as the bank. And I can cure part of the first worry--all of it, in fact; he had the money to take up the Cortwright notes, and when I left him he was on his way to Hardwick's window to do it.
human
It has been another of the get-rich-quick days in Mirapolis, he said evasively.
gpt
Somebody told me that the corner opposite Poodles's was bought and sold three times within a single hour and that each time the price was doubled.
human
And you are trying to tell me that father made a hundred thousand dollars just in those few hours by buying and selling Mirapolis lots? You don't know him, Victor. He is totally lacking the trading gift. He has often said that he couldn't stand on a street corner and sell twenty-dollar gold pieces at nineteen dollars apiece--nobody would buy of him.
gpt
Nevertheless, I am telling you that he had the money to take up those notes, Brouillard insisted.
human
I saw it in his hands.