"To wine, women and gambling, at the age of twenty-four – one hundred thousand dollars. That's your bill, my boy, and – I've got to pay it."
James Carbhoy leaned back smiling, his half-humorous eyes squarely challenging his son, who was lounging in a luxurious morocco chair at the other side of the desk.
As the moments passed without producing any reply, he reached towards the cabinet at his elbow and helped himself to a large cigar. Without any scruple he tore the end off it with his strong teeth and struck a match.
"Well?"
Gordon Carbhoy cleared his throat and looked serious. In spite of his father's easy, smiling manner he knew that a crisis in his affairs had been reached. He understood the iron will lying behind the pleasant steel-gray eyes of his parent. It was a will that flinched at nothing, a will that had carved for its owner a great fortune in America's most strenuous financial arena, the railroad world. He also knew the only way in which to meet his father's challenge with any hope of success. Above everything else the millionaire demanded courage and manhood – manhood as he understood it – from those whom he regarded well.
"I'm waiting."
Gordon stirred. The millionaire carefully lit his cigar.
"Put that way it – sounds rotten, Dad, doesn't it?" Gordon's mobile lips twisted humorously, and he also reached towards the cigar cabinet.
But the older man intercepted him. He held out a box of lesser cigars.
"Try one of these, Gordon. One of the others would add two dollars to your bill. These are half the price."
The two men smiled into each other's eyes. A great devotion lay between them. But their regard was not likely to interfere with the business in hand.
Gordon helped himself. Then he rose from his chair. He moved across the handsome room, towering enormously. His six feet three inches were well matched by a great pair of athletic shoulders. His handsome face bore no traces of the fast living implied by the enormous total of his debts. The wholesome tan of outdoor sports left him a fine specimen of the more brilliant youth of America. Then, too, in his humorous blue eyes lay an extra dash of recklessness, which was probably due to his superlative physical advantages. He came back to his chair and propped his vast body on the back of it. His father was watching him affectionately.
"Dad," he exclaimed, "I'm – sorry."
The other shook his head.
"Don't say that. It's not true. I'd hate it to be true – anyway."
Gordon's face lit.
"You're – going to pay it?"
"Sure. I'm not going to have our name stink in our home city. Sure I'm going to pay it. But – "
"But – what?"
"So are you."
The faint ticking of the bracket clock on the wall suddenly became like the blows of a hammer.
"I – I don't think I – "
Young Gordon broke off. His merry eyes had suddenly become troubled. The crisis was becoming acute.
For some moments the millionaire smoked on luxuriously. Then he removed his cigar and cleared his throat.
"I'm not going to shout. That's not my way," he said in his easy, deliberate fashion. "Guess folks have got to be young, and the younger they're young – why, the better. I was young, and – got over it. You're going to get over it. I figure to help you that way. This is not the first bill you've handed me, but – but it's going to be the last. Guess your baby clothes can be packed right up. Maybe they'll be all the better for it when you hand 'em on to – your kiddie."
The trouble had passed out of the younger man's eyes. They were filled with the humor inspired by his father's manner of dealing with the affair in hand.
"That's all right," he said. "I seem to get that clear enough."
"I'm glad." The millionaire twisted the cigar into the corner of his mouth. "We can pass right on to – other things. You've been one of my secretaries for three years, and it don't seem to me the work's worried you a lot. Still, I put you in early thinking you'd get interested in the source of the dollars you were handing out in bunches. Maybe it wasn't the best way of doing it. Still, I had to try it. You see, it's a great organization I control – though you may not know it. I control more millions than you could count on your fingers and toes, and they've cost me some mental sweat gathering 'em together. Some day you've got to sit in this chair and talk over this 'phone, and when you do you'll be – a man. You see, I don't fancy my pile being invested in cut flowers and automobiles for lady friends. I don't seem to have heard that thousand-dollar parties to boys who can't smoke a five-cent cigar right, and girls who're just out for a good time anyway, are liable to bring you interest on the capital invested, except in the way of contempt. And five-thousand dollar apartments are calculated to rival the luxury of Rome before its fall. Big play at 'draw' and 'auction' are two diseases not provided for amongst the cures in patent med'cine advertisements, and as for the older vintages in wines, they're only permissible in folks who've quit worrying to scratch dollars together. None of these things seem to me good business, and in a man at the outset of his career some of 'em are – immoral. You've had your preliminary run, and I'll admit you've shown a fine turn of speed. But it smacks too much of the race-track, and seems to me quite unsuited to the hard highroad of big finance you're destined to travel.
