Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/92

 made seven thousand dollars of my own last year. Do you believe me?"

"Of course I do," said Gregg.

A few minutes after that—it was almost midnight—Felix Rinderfeld appeared.

His arrival was by means of a new which either was a Rolls-Royce or so perfect a copy that the difference was not distinguishable from the third floor sun parlor. Rinderfeld proved to be a young man, evidently not five years older than Gregg. As his name suggested, he was a Jew and he was of the type that keeps himself, while young, in vigorous physical condition; a man of medium height and ordinary proportions, he had cultivated an emphatic self-confidence of bearing sufficient to make most people describe him as having "presence." Gregg recognized him at once as a man who, without doing anything actually unmannerly, yet made it a custom to be conspicuous about such places as the Blackstone and the Drake; once, Gregg remembered, he had almost asked a waiter who the fellow was.

He was not embarrassed in the slightest about his business nor did he expect his clients to be about theirs. In fact, he entered as though he had dropped in upon personal friends for a casual midnight chat and was in no hurry to get to business. Gregg was. He informed Rinderfeld carefully of Charles Hale's position in respect to his family and also went into what details he could concerning Hale's situation in Tri-Lake, his recent rapid promotions and the opposition of Stanway; he related the facts which Marjorie knew and how Doctor Grantham had taken Hale with Marjorie and Whittaker to Fursten's. Rinderfeld seemed to approve heartily of Fursten's. Gregg submitted him-