nerves. It was also an effort at dissimulation, for his sudden
struggle to get his scattered lines of manhood together still carried
a touch of the heroic. But I'd caught a glimpse of his soul when it
wasn't on parade. And I knew what I knew. He tried to work his poor
old harried face into a smile as I crossed over to his side. But, like
Topsy's kindred, it died a-borning.

[Illustration: "What's happened?" I asked]

"What's happened?" I asked, dropping on my knees close beside him.

Instead of answering me, he swung about in the swivel-chair so that he
more directly faced the window. The movement also served to pull away
the hand which I had almost succeeded in capturing. Nothing, I've
found, can wound a real man more than pity.

"What's happened?" I repeated. For I knew, now, that something was
really and truly and tragically wrong, as plainly as though Dinky-Dunk
had up and told me so by word of mouth. You can't live with a man for
nearly four years without growing into a sort of clairvoyant knowledge
of those subterranean little currents that feed the wells of mood and
temper and character. He pushed the papers on the desk away from him
without looking at me.

"Oh, it's nothing much," he said. But he said it so listlessly I knew
he was merely trying to lie like a gentleman.

"If it's bad news, I want to know it, right slam-bang out," I told
him. And for the first time he turned and looked at me, in a
meditative and impersonal sort of way that brought the fish-hook
tugging at my thorax again. He looked at me as though some inner part
of him were still debating as to whether or not he was about to be
confronted by a woman in tears. Then a touch of cool desperation crept
up into his eyes.

"Our whole apple-cart's gone over," he slowly and quietly announced,
with those coldly narrowed eyes still intent on my face, as though
very little and yet a very great deal depended on just how I was going
to accept that slightly enigmatic remark. And he must have noticed the
quick frown of perplexity which probably came to my face, for that
right hand of his resting on the table opened and then closed again,
as though it were squeezing a sponge very dry. "They've got me," he
said. "They've got me--to the last dollar!"

I stood up in the uncertain light, for it takes time to digest strong
words, the same as it takes time to digest strong meat.

I remembered how, during the last half-year, Dinky-Dunk had been on the
wing,