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Directly the door of his private room was discreetly opened, admitting a square-jawed, beetle-browed man, heavy and ugly a coarse type, yet not without distinction. The two men did not shake hands. Mr. Christopher Shayne bowed blandly, deferentially, yet not servilely, and again he cleared his throat.
When one understood all that had gone before, the moment was an electric one for the future of the Poquette region. In this apparently trivial offer the railroad king had formally offered the olive branch. He gazed at the lumber barons eagerly yet shrewdly. It was evident that they had silently fixed on Shayne to reply.
By collar and belt he swung him back and drove him sprawling into a drift. "Are you in a hurry, too, Shayne?" he asked pleasantly, and Shayne buried his head beside Fallon's in the snow. Then Steve closed the door carefully and turned again to Big Louie. "Louie," he said, "I make it a rule to urge no man who does not wish to stay. If it needs persuasion to keep you, I do not want you here.
Several passengers disembarked at the end of the carry road, and were received respectfully yet uproariously by the woodsmen who had just arrived in a fresh train-load from the Spinnaker end. Connick came elbowing through the press that surrounded them. "Mr. Shayne," he cried, "she's come, after all, hasn't she? Are you and your friends goin' to ride back on her across the carry?
Shayne arose from his desk, rearranged his diamond scarf-pin in his gray satin Ascot tie, flicked two imaginary particles of dust from his tight-fitting cutaway coat, whisked his silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket and in again, so that the lavender border was visible, cleared his throat, and stood in an attitude of agreeable expectancy.
He disappeared. And hard upon his going Steve wheeled and fronted those scores of silent men. His eyes leaped from point to point, as Harrigan's had craftily flitted. Briefly, crisply, he accompanied the sweeping survey with a voice that was loud enough for all of them to hear. "Big Louie! . . . Fallon! . . . Shayne!
But he knew that Big Louie had been crying, knew that Shayne had smiled. It was the second time that Shayne had smiled that evening his second bad mistake. Long after they had disappeared into the north toward the Reserve Company's camps, Steve wondered that it had not cost him his life.
But that was for a very rich man who has since bought a Velasquez. I doubt if he will buy any more." Scorpa rose as though to leave. "My friend wants five hundred thousand lire." Mr. Shayne laughed scornfully.
But I take it that you have something of more than ordinary importance to communicate." He finished his sentence by giving his mustache a thoughtful twirl upward, first on one side and then on the other. The Duke Scorpa let his rat-like eyes rest a moment upon the alert face of Mr. Shayne before he answered: "You said once in my presence that you had long wanted to acquire a Raphael.
But you are running with the wrong crowd, Louie; you'll learn it someday but someday may be too late." The big, dreamy-eyed man was hardly listening, but he gestured toward the door. And Steve treated his departure kindly, as he had always treated his presence. Outside where Shayne and Fallon had picked themselves up, Big Louie hesitated and fumbled in his pocket with a cold-cramped hand.
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