It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already itching for the caitiff neck of him.
Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice; he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when word and money were given him to take himself away.
When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my taste.
“You know young Van Flange?” Inspector McCue gave a nod of assent.
“And you can locate him?”
“The proposition is so easy it's a pushover.”
“Find him, then, and send him out of the town; and for a reason, should he ask one, you may say that I shall slay him should we meet.”
Inspector McCue looked at me curiously. He elevated his brow, but in the end he said nothing, whether of inquiry or remark. Without a reply he took himself away. My face, at the kindliest, was never one to speak of confidences or invite a question, and I may suppose the expression of it, as I dealt with Inspector McCue, to have been more than commonly repellent.
There abode another with whom I wanted word; that one was Morton; for hard by forty years he had not once failed me in a strait. I would ask him the story of those Blackberry stocks. A glance into my steel box had showed me the bottom as bare as winter boughs. The last scrap was gone; and no more than the house that covered us, and those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds that were Blossom's, to be left of all our fortune.
My temper was not one to mourn for any loss of money; and yet in this instance I would have those steps that led to my destruction set forth to me. If it were the president of Blackberry Traction who had taken my money, I meditated reprisal. Not that I fell into any heat of hatred against him; he but did to me what Morton and I a few years further back had portioned out to him. For all that, I was coldly resolved to have my own again. I intended no stock shifts; I would not seek Wall Street for my revenge. I knew a sharper method and a surer. It might glisten less with elegance, but it would prove more secure. But first, I would have the word of Morton.