"You admit that Mr. Fogg made that offer for you or your interests, do
you?"
"Well, yes!" admitted Marston. "We allow Mr. Fogg to act for us in a few
matters."
"I am glad to know it. There has been so much cross-tag going on that I
have been a little doubtful!"
"Kindly avoid sarcasm and temper, if you please! Do you care to accept
the offer?"
Mayo glared at the financier, looking him up and down. Furious hatred
took away his power of sane consideration. He was in no mood to weigh
chances, either for himself or for his associates. He doubted
Marston's honesty of purpose. He knew how this man must feel toward
the presumptuous fool who had dared to look up at Alma Marston; he was
conscious that the magnate must be concealing some especial motive under
his cold exterior.
Whether Marston was anticipating blackmail from Mayo's possession of the
documents or had hatched up ostensible litigation in order to force the
bothersome amateurs out of the Conomo proposition, the young man could
not determine; either view of the situation was equally insulting to
those whom he made his antagonists.
"Well!" snapped the magnate, plainly finding it difficult to restrain
his own violent hatred much longer in this interview. "Decide whether
you will have a little ready cash and a good position or whether you
will be kicked out entirely!"
"I don't want your money! You're trying to cheat me with fake law
business even while you are offering me money! I don't want your job! I
have worked for you once. I'll never be your hired man again."
"If I did not know that you have a better reason for standing out in
this fashion, I'd say that you have allowed, your spite to drive you
crazy, young man."
"What is that better reason?"
"Blackmail! You propose to trade on a theft."
Mayo struggled for a moment with an impulse that was almost frantic; he
wanted to throw the packet in Mar-ston's face and tell him that he lied.
Again the young man felt that queer sense of helplessness; he knew that
he could not make Marston understand.
"Mayo, I have tried to deal with you as if you were more or less of
a man. I was willing to admit that my agents had injured you by their
mistakes. I have offered a decent compromise. I have done what I hardly
ever do--bother with petty details like this!"
That impulse to deliver the papers to Marston was then not so insistent;
even Mayo's rising anger did not prompt him to do that. The wreck of a
man's life and hopes dismissed flippantly as petty details!