But none recognized more justly
than the real Richard Gantry the precise instant at which to bridle the
loose tongue or when to make it wag away from the subject which has
reached its nicely calculated climax. While the flush of irritation was
still making him ashamed that he had shown so much warmth, Blount found
himself gossiping with his table companion over a social function two
days old; and subsequently, when the waiter brought the cigars, Gantry
was congratulating himself that the danger-point, if any there were, was
safely past.
It was after the club luncheon, and while the two young men were on
their way to the smoking-room, that some one on business bent stopped
Gantry in the corridor. Blount strolled on by himself, and, finding the
smoking-room unoccupied, went to lounge in a lazy-chair standing in a
little alcove lined with bookcases and half screened by the racks of the
newspaper files. Notwithstanding the successful topic changing at table,
he was still brooding over the false position in which his father's
plans had placed him; wherefore he craved solitude and a chance to think
things over fairly and without heat.
Shortly afterward Gantry looked in, and, apparently missing the
half-concealed easy-chair and its occupant in the bookcase alcove, went
his way. He had scarcely had time to get out of the building, one would
say, before two men entered the smoking-room, coming down the corridor
from the grill.
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