John Boland straightened on his feet. Hurricane Island was a trifle but Shell Point was a matter of millions. His lips parted, his teeth gleamed like yellow fangs, his cold wrath became hot; his fierce brows beetled and crawled like excited caterpillars. He was no longer an offended majesty but a baffled beast of prey, halted above his kill.
"Young man!" he raged, and his voice was freighted with a sense of the inadequacy of words to convey his feelings, "I warn you!" He shook his lean forefinger. "If you, by so much as one word, breathe a hint against the integrity of that Shell Point transaction, I'll have you pilloried in this community. I'll have you stripped! . . . I'll have you put in jail!!!! That's what I'll do with you." The walls of the private office vibrated to the venomous crescendo.
Yet Henry found Mr. Boland less terrible as he became less subtle. Put him in jail? That sounded cheap and weak; as well as absurd. Put him in jail for being helplessly honest and decently truthful? Ridiculous!
"Do your worst, Mr. Boland," he invited, with a low vibrancy in his tone; "for me the zero hour has come."
"You traitor! . . . You ingrate!" raved Mr. Boland futilely.
This was a good deal to stand. Henry whitened, then reddened, then bit his lip, while his brow was elevated a trifle. "No; neither of them. But, by thunder, it looks to me as if I'm the only man near you who isn't both. I feel sorry for you, Mr. Boland."
Mr. Boland relieved himself of a gesture of irritated contempt; yet appeared to hold his final burst of resentment in a state of suspended utterance until youth's infatuated conceit might reach its climax.
