That glass of exquisite fashion and mold of proper form, albeit something grizzled, and like myself a trifle dimmed of time, tendered his congratulations upon my re-conquest of the town. I drew him straight to my affair of Blackberry.
“Really, old chap,” said Morton, the while plaintively disapproving of me through those eyeglasses, so official in his case, “really, old chap, you walked into a trap, and one a child should have seen. That Blackberry fellow had the market rigged, don't y' know. I could have saved you, but, my boy, I didn't dare. You've such a beastly temper when anyone saves you. Besides, it isn't good form to wander into the stock deals of a gentleman, and begin to tell him what he's about; it isn't, really.”
“But what did this Blackberry individual do?” I persisted.
“Why, he let you into a corner, don't y' know! He had been quietly buying Blackberry for months. He had the whole stock of the road in his safe; and you, in the most innocent way imaginable, sold thousands of shares. Now when you sell a stock, you must buy; you must, really! And there was no one from whom to buy save our sagacious friend. Gad! as the business stood, old chap, he might have had the coat off your back!” And Morton glared in horror over the disgrace of the situation.
While I took no more than a glimmer of Morton's meaning, two things were made clear. The Blackberry president had stripped me of my millions; and he had laid a snare to get them.
“Was young Van Flange in the intrigue?”
“Not in the beginning, at least. There was no need, don't y' know. His hand was already into your money up to the elbow.”
“What do you intend by saying that young Van Flange was not in the affair in the beginning?”
“The fact is, old chap, one or two things occurred that led me to think that young Van Flange discovered the trap after he'd sold some eight or ten thousand shares. There was a halt, don't y' know, in his operations. Then later he went on and sold you into bankruptcy. I took it from young Van Flange's manner that the Blackberry fellow might have had some secret hold upon him, and either threatened him, or promised him, or perhaps both, to get him to go forward with his sales; I did, really. Young Van Flange didn't, in the last of it, conduct himself like a free moral or, I should say, immoral agent.”
“I can't account for it,” said I, falling into thought; “I cannot see how young Van Flange could have been betrayed into the folly you describe.”