small coins spent to buy a great prize! They are finished and forgotten. But now--think of it, if you will! I am obliged to dance a part, all unwilling, in this macabre ballet you call justice--and to what end? Who benefits?
Certainly not I. Far better to put all this foolishness aside and start afresh, like the urbane gentlemen we are!"
"I must ask my father's views on the subject--if ever I see him again. He has disappeared; were you aware of this?"
"I heard talk to this effect."
"What has happened to him? Do you know?"
Floreste drained the cup at a gulp.
"Why should I tell you, even if I knew? It is by your act that I am here, counting off the minutes of my life."
"It might be considered a generous act."
"Generosity, is it?" Floreste filled his cup from the synthan flask.
"All my life I have been generous! Have I been ennobled, or in any way rewarded? I am still listed as a far collateral. Meanwhile I have given of my genius with both hands! I am giving my personal fortune to the new Orpheum, even though I will never see the splendid reality, But I will still give! It shall be my memorial, and folk down the ages will speak my name with awe!"
Glawen gave his head a skeptical shake.
"This may not be possible, which is the news I came to bring you. Not happy news, I fear."
"What are you saying?"
"It is simple enough. I have suffered great damages by reason of your wanton, cruel and purposeful acts. Therefore, I have placed an action at law against you, your property and all your fortune in money. I have been assured of a very large award. Your plans for an Orpheum must be postponed."
Floreste stared at Glawen in consternation.
"You cannot be serious! It would be the act of a maniac!"
"Not at all. You arranged a terrible fate for me, and I suffered greatly. As I think back it seems a true nightmare!
Why should you not recompense me? My case is legitimate."
"In theory only! You want my money, the treasure I have pieced
together sol by sol, always with the grand dream in mind!
And now, with the dream at last attainable, you would shatter my universe!"
"You were not concerned with my plight at Pogan's Point. I am not concerned with yours."
With sagging features Floreste sat staring at the white flower. On sudden thought he hitched himself up in the chair.
"You are belaboring the wrong person. It was Kirdy, not I, who insisted on the call to Pogan's Point. I acceded, true, but without emotion; your fate meant nothing to me. It was Kirdy who contrived the deed and enjoyed it enormously.
Take his money if you must; leave mine alone."
"I can't really believe this," said Glawen.
"Kirdy had nothing in his mind but confusion."
"My dear fellow, how can you be so dense? Kirdy's hatred for you might have caused his confusion, but it was not the other way around! He has detested you since you were children!"
Glawen looked off across the room and down through the years. Floreste, in this case, was telling him the brutal truth.
"It's a feeling I've had at the back of my mind but I always kept it repressed, down and out of sight. Kirdy was considered a fine upright fellow; it was wrong to think such things of Kirdy even when they could hardly be disguised.
But I can't understand why. He had no reason to hate me."
Floreste sat looking at his flower.
"After he called Pogan's Point it spilled out of him like vomit. He held nothing back. It seems that all his life, you took everything he wanted: without effort or strain. He was mad for Sessily Veder; he craved her so badly it made him sick to look at her. She avoided him as if he were deformed, but she went gladly to you. You won school honors and Bureau B rank, and all without apparent effort. At Yipton he tried his best to implicate you but the Oomps wouldn't listen and placed him under arrest. He told i me that thereafter he hated you so much that whenever he saw you ;
his knees went weak."
"It makes me a bit sick to hear of it."
"It is sickening stuff. At last you left him alone at Fexelburg, and with great gladness Kirdy knew that the time had come. The telephone call to Pogan's Point was his moment to even the score. In all candor, I was appalled by so much ferocity."
Glawen sighed.
"All this is interesting, in a horrid way, but not what I wanted to know."
"And what was that?"
"Where is my father?"
