“There is no use?” asked Gillian, almost lightheartedly.
“I am sorry,” she said again.
“May I write a note?” asked Gillian, with a smile. He seated himself at the big library table. She supplied him with paper and pen, and then went back to her secrétaire.
Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand dollars in these words:
“Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, $1,000 on account of the eternal happiness, owed by Heaven to the best and dearest woman on earth.”
Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed and went his way.
His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.
“I have expended the thousand dollars,” he said, cheerily, to Tolman of the gold glasses, “and I have come to render account of it, as I agreed. There is quite a feeling of summer in the air—do you not think so, Mr. Tolman?” He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer’s table. “You will find there a memorandum, sir, of the modus operandi of the vanishing of the dollars.”
Without touching the envelope, Mr. Tolman went to a decor and called his partner, Sharp. Together they explored the caverns of an immense safe. Forth they dragged as trophy of their search a big envelope
[82]
