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314 cautious whisper, but before the caller could sit down a muffled voice reached them.

"You, Rowe?"

"Yes, Mr. Taylor," he replied outside the stateroom door.

"Well, come in! Don't stand there palaverin'!"

From his rumpled bed Luke stared hard at his secretary, the chronic irritability which had been in his eyes yielding to amazement. For a long moment he studied the broken lips, the purple patch below one eye, the lump on a cheek bone.

"Who the devil did that?"

Rowe made a grimace.

"Your son," he said simply. A gleam of something like satisfaction leaped into the half closed eye and its normal mate. "We had a slight argument as to the advisability of your going ahead and buying this pine. It ended—this way."

For a moment Luke said nothing and Rowe thought the thin lips moved in a half smile of sardonic pride. But a flush came into the face and anger showed in the old eyes.

"He went that far? You're sure that was the trouble? He fought you to stop this deal?"

"And that's only part of it, sir. He has raised—quite a disturbance."

"Where is he now?"

"In jail."

Luke set his feet on the floor and stood up, night-shirt dangling about his shrunken calves. He was a stooped gaunt, scare-crow of a figure.

"In jail, eh? For what?"

"Assault."