Well, the fact that the banker had, in some apparently occult manner,
been warned, would make Hodder's task easier--or rather less difficult.
His feelings were even more complicated than he had anticipated. The
moments of suspense were trying to his nerves, and he had a shrewd notion
that this making men wait was a favourite manoeuvre of Eldon Parr's; nor
had he underrated the benumbing force of that personality. It was
evident that the financier intended him to open the battle, and he was
--as he had expected--finding it difficult to marshal the regiments of his
arguments. In vain he thought of the tragedy of Garvin . . . . The
thing was more complicated. And behind this redoubtable and sinister
Eldon Parr he saw, as it were, the wraith of that: other who had once
confessed the misery of his loneliness. . . .

At last the banker rang, sharply, the bell on his desk. A secretary
entered, to whom he dictated a telegram which contained these words:
"Langmaid has discovered a way out." It was to be sent to an address in
Texas. Then he turned in his chair and crossed his knees, his hand
fondling an ivory paper-cutter. He smiled a little.

"Well, Mr. Hodder," he said.

The rector, intensely on his guard, merely inclined his head in
recognition that his turn had come.

"I was sorry," the banker continued, after a perceptible pause,--that
you could not see your way clear to have come with me on the cruise."

"I must thank you again," Hodder answered, "but I felt--as I wrote you
--that certain matters made it impossible for me to go."