"Buy something to burn, kid."
Pete's idea of Worth Gilbert would be quite different from that of the
directors in there. After all, human beings are only what we see them
from our varying angles. Pete slid down, looking back to the last at the
tall young fellow who was taking his place at the wheel. Cummings and I
got in and we were off.

There in the machine, my new boss driving, Cummings sitting next him, I
at the further side, began the keen, cool probe after a truth which to
me lay very evidently on the surface. Any one, I would have said, might
see with half an eye that Worth Gilbert had bought Clayte's suitcase so
that he could get a thrill out of hunting for it. Cummings I knew had in
charge all the boy's Pacific Coast holdings; and since his mother's
death during the first year of the war, these were large. Worth
manifested toward them and the man who spoke to him of them the
indifference, almost contempt, of an impatient young soul who in the
years just behind him, had often wagered his chance of his morning's
coffee against some other fellow's month's pay feeling that he was
putting up double.

It seemed the sense of ownership was dulled in one who had seen
magnificent properties masterless, or apparently belonging to some limp,
bloodstained bundle of flesh that lay in one of the rooms. In vain
Cummings urged the state of the market, repeating with more
particularity and force what Whipple had said. The mines were tied up by
strike; their stock, while perfectly good, was down to twenty cents on
the dollar; to sell now would be madness. Worth only repeated doggedly.

"I've got to have the money--Monday morning--ten o'clock. I don't care
what you sell--or hock. Get it."

"See here," the lawyer was puzzled, and therefore unprofessionally out
of temper. "Even sacrificing your stuff in the most outrageous manner, I
couldn't realize enough--not by ten o'clock Monday. You'll have to go to
your father. You can catch the five-five for Santa Ysobel."

I could see Worth choke back a hot-tempered refusal of the suggestion.
The funds he'd got to have, even if he went through some humiliation to
get them.

"At that," he said slowly, "father wouldn't have any great amount of
cash on hand. Say I went to him with the story--and took the cat-hauling
he'll give me--should I be much better off?"

"Sure you would." Cummings leaned back. I saw he considered his point
made. "Whipple would rather take their own bank stock th