"You expect me--to put my name--to this?"
He inclined his head.
"It is--_impossible_!"
He replied evenly:
"It is necessary."
"You are asking me to sign my own death warrant."
He lifted his shoulders.
"It is your reputation or Essie Tisdale's."
The name seemed to prick her like a goad. Her hands and body twitched
nervously and then he saw swift decision arrive in her face.
"I'll not do it!"
As moved by a common impulse they arose.
"It's the lesser of two evils."
"I don't care!" She reiterated in a kind of hopeless desperation, "I
don't care--I'll fight!"
He eyed her again with a recurrence of his impersonal professional
scrutiny.
"You can't go through it, Doc; you haven't the stamina, any more. You
don't know what you're up against, for I haven't half showed my hand. I
have no personal grievance, as you know, but the wrongs of my
countrymen are my wrongs, and for your brutality to them you shall
answer to me. Fight if you will, but when you're done you'll not
disgrace your profession again in this or any other State."
While this scene was occurring in Doctor Harpe's office, Andy P. Symes
in his office was toying impatiently with an unopened letter from Mudge
as Mr. Percy Parrott, hat in hand, stood before him.
"It's not that I'm worried at all, Mr. Symes"--every line of Parrott's
face was deep-lined with anxiety as he spoke--"but, of course, I've made
you these loans largely upon my own responsibility, I've exceeded my
authority, in fact, and any failure on your part----" Mr. Parrott
finding himself floundering under Symes's cold gaze blurted out
desperately, "Well, 'twould break us!"
"Certainly, certainly, I know all that, but, really, these frequent
duns--this Homeseekers' Excursion has put me behind with my work, but as
soon as things are straightened out again----"
"Oh, of course. That's all right. I understand, but as soon as you
conveniently can----"
Mr. Parrott's lengthened jaw rested between the "white wings" of his
collar as he turned away. It might have reached his shirt-stud had he
known the number of creditors that had preceded him.
Even Symes's confident assurances that the complete failure of the
Homeseekers' Excursion was relatively a small matter, could not entirely
eradicate from the minds of Crowheart's merchants the picture presented
by the procession of excursionists returning with their satchels to the
station, glowering at Crowheart's citizens as they passed and making
loud charges of misrepresentation and fraud.
When the door closed behind him Symes dropped the catch that he might
read Mudge's bulky letter undisturbed. Mudge's diction was ever open to
criticism, but he had a faculty for conveying his meaning which genius
well might envy.
The letter read: