The possibility of a new twist to events was very fascinating, though I did not understand it. I was just about to question Kennedy about the telautomaton when the door opened again. This time it was Hastings himself.
“Has there been any word?” he asked, eagerly.
“Nothing so far,” replied Craig. “You came on the express, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he replied, his face wearing a puzzled expression. “I don’t quite understand what is going on.”
“What in particular?” queried Craig, seeing that there was something on Hastings’s mind.
“Why, Shelby, of course,” he answered. “Some change has taken place in him. He’s not like the Shelby I used to know. Yesterday he came in to town. He was on the train again to-day. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Johnson Walcott was on the train, too. He noticed it—called my attention to it, as a matter of fact. I saw some of the younger men, too. Shelby as a regular commuter is a joke to them. But it’s more than a joke, I’m thinking. Shelby never came near Wall Street—or Broad Street—before. But now they tell me he seems to be taking an active interest in the Maddox Munitions stock on the curb. I don’t understand it.”
“Could he be trying to put through some deal?” I inquired, hastily. “Perhaps he’s trying to get the control his brother would have had.”
“I don’t doubt that he has some such scheme,” agreed Hastings. “But—well, what do you say, Kennedy? Doesn’t it look suspicious, so soon afterward? It may be real ambition, now. He may have changed. But—”
Hastings’s “but” meant volumes.
Just then the telephone rang and the lawyer answered it, handing the instrument over to Kennedy.