Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rdMerwin, Samuel
General
Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd
Merwin, Samuel
Young men -- Fiction
'In these matters, unfortunately, where a relative or family friend has
for years had charge of money belonging to others, little temptations
are bound to come up. Now, your uncle may be the most scrupulously
honest of men, but----'
'He has a bad eye,' Henry put in.
'I don't doubt it. Calverly, let me tell you--never forget this--a man
who hesitates for one instant to account freely, fully for money is
never to be trusted.'
'But what can I do?'
'Do? Everything! Just what I'm doing with Charlie Waterhouse, for one
thing--insist on a full statement.'
'They framed a letter--or McGibbon framed it--demanding an accounting,
'in order that further legal measures may not become necessary.'
McGibbon said he would send it early in the morning, registered, and
with a special-delivery stamp. 'Later, they decided to add emphasis by
means of a telegram demanding immediate consideration of the letter.
Late that night, when Humphrey came upstairs into a pitch-dark
living-room and switched on the light, he discovered a pale youth
sitting stiffly on a window-seat wide-awake, eyes staring nervously,
hands clasped.
'Well, what on earth?' said he, in mild surprise.
'Oh, Hump, I've wondered what you'd think--leaving you in the lurch with
all that work!
Humphrey threw out a lean hand.
'I can manage. Get some help from one of the students. And Gertie
Wombast is usually available---- Oh, say; how about the old man? Did you
tell him what's what?'
Henry's burning eyes stared out of that white face. Suddenly--so
suddenly that Humphrey himself started--he sprang up, cried out; 'No!
No! No!' and rushed into his bedroom, slamming the door after him.
Humphrey looked soberly at the door, shook his head, filled his pipe.
That 'No! No! No!' still rang in his ears It was a cry of pain.
Humphrey had suffered; but he had never known a turbulence of the sort
that every now and then seemed to tear Henry to pieces.
'Must be fierce,' he thought. 'But it works up as well as down. Runs to
extremes. Creative faculty, I suppose. Well, he's got it--that's all.
And he's only a kid. Thing to do's to stand by and try to steady him up
a little when he comes out of it.'
And the philosophical Humphrey went to bed.
6
At noon, no word had come from Uncle Arthur. Henry, all the morning, had
flitted back and forth between McGibbon's rear office and the telegraph
office in the 'depot.'
At twelve-thirty, they sent a peremptory message, demanding a reply by
three o'clock. An ultimatum.
The reply came unexpectedly, with startling effect, at twenty-five
minutes past two, requesting Henry to come directly into his uncle's
Chicago office.
He caught the two-forty-seven. McGibbon, who had missed nothing of the
concern on Henry's face at this brisk counter-offensive on the part of
Uncle Arthur, was with him.
McGibbon waited in the corner drug store while Henry-went up in one of
the elevators of the great La Salle Street office-building.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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