Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/71

 One of the bankers asked him what he had done with his big balance.

"Invested it in experience," answered Armitage, gravely.

"Foreign stock markets, eh? Well, we all have to learn," said the banker, convinced that Armitage had been fooling around the foreign bourses. "I called Bordman in after the third withdrawal. He said you wanted the money."

Summed up or simmered down, Armitage had, instead of forty thousand a year, something like twenty-four thousand. As he had seldom spent more than half his income, his life might continue along the old grooves with nothing more serious than a deep sense of irritation. He carried Bordman's letter around in his pockets for weeks, and whenever time hung heavy on his hands he reread it. He even perpetrated a mild form of forgery by copying it. At four-thirty that afternoon his worries evaporated temporarily. He found himself on the lounge in the Burlingham library, his elbow touching Miss Athelstone's; and frequently, whenever she stirred, he caught