Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/103

 the business. That, you see, would secure control in our hands."

"Settled, by hokey!" said Milton Morris with a flourish of his long arm.

The next morning the lawyers were put to work. But the next afternoon George, instead of going to work to sell stock, drove out to Grosse Pointe to the home of Stephen Gilman. A gray silk dressing-gown wrapped the tall form of the banker, and he reclined upon a chaise longue, smoking a cigar comfortably and with only a patch of cotton held by adhesive strips upon a spot above his left eye to remind of the encounter with the milk-cans.

"Mr. Gilman!" George exclaimed in tones of humble delight. "I am extremely relieved to find you looking so well!"

But the banker's reception was somewhat waspish. "You realized, of course, from the moment of the accident that even the possibility of the loan was off?"

Instantly George understood. After consenting to receive him, the idea had arisen in the banker's mind that his courtesy might be taken advantage of to reopen negotiations. But—if Mr. Gilman was still holding the mere possibility of being appealed to in his mind, there still must be the faint glimmer of a hope. George saw this like a flash, and with it came a sunburst of inspiration.