Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/41

 a little more water, a little more whiskey, and then found the mixture to his liking.

"You see," he said, "Fox got a letter here to say that Wilkinson had died suddenly—some affection of the heart. Wilkinson was to have written a series of personal articles on prominent people. Well, Fox was nonplussed and I put in a word for you."

"I'm sure I'm much—" I began.

"Not at all, not at all," Callan interrupted, blandly. "I've known you and you've known me for a number of years."

A sudden picture danced before my eyes—the portrait of the Callan of the old days—the fawning, shady individual, with the seedy clothes, the furtive eyes and the obliging manners.

"Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see that that gives me any claim."

Callan cleared his throat.

"The lapse of time," he said in his grand manner, "rivets what we may call the bands of association."

He paused to inscribe this sentence on the tablets of his memory. It would be dragged in—to form a purple patch—in his new serial.