"What have you to propose?" said Armstrong, impatient of these puerile preliminaries. Fosdick was as clever at trickery as is the cleverest; but at its best the best trickery is puerile, once the onlooker, or even the intended victim, is on the alert.
"We must give the accounts a thorough overhauling," answered Fosdick. "But it must be done by our own people. I propose the ordinary procedure for that sort of thing—different men doing different parts of it piecemeal, and sending their reports to one central man who collates them. In that way, only the one man knows what is going on or what is found out."
"Who's the man?" asked Armstrong.
"It struck me that Hugo, being one of the fourth vice-presidents and so in touch with the comptroller's department, would most naturally step into Westervelt's place while he was away."
"Certainly," said Armstrong cordially. "Hugo's the very person."
Fosdick had not dismissed Westervelt's suggestion that Armstrong might be countermining so summarily as he had led Westervelt to believe; he did dismiss it now, however. "The young fool," he decided, "just wanted to show his authority." To Armstrong he said, "You and Hugo can work together."
"No, leave it to Hugo," said Armstrong. "I am content so long as it is definitely understood that I am not responsible. Let the Executive Committee meet and put Hugo formally in charge during Westervelt's absence."
Fosdick went up to Westervelt's house to see him a few days later; to his surprise the old bulwark of public and private virtue seemed completely restored. And Fosdick, with a blindness which he never could account for, was content with his explanation that he had been thinking it over and had reached the conclusion that his interests were perfectly secure, so long as he had the four books. Without a protest he acquiesced in the appointment of Hugo. And so it came peacefully about that Hugo, convinced that no one had ever undertaken quite so important a task as this of his, set himself to investigating the whole financial department of the O.A.D. That is to say, he issued the orders suggested by his father, issued them to subordinates suggested by his father, and brought to his father the reports they made to him.
On the third or fourth day of Westervelt's "illness," Fosdick caught a cold which laid him up with a ferocious attack of the gout. Most of the reports which the subordinates brought to Hugo he did not understand; but he felt that it was his duty to examine them, and spent about three of the four hours he gave to business each day in marching his eye solemnly down the columns of figures and explanations. And thus it came about that he discovered Armstrong's "crime"—twenty-five thousand dollars, which had been paid to Horace Armstrong on his own order and never accounted for; a few months later, a second item of the same size and mystery; a few months later, a third; a fourth, a fifth, a sixth and so on, until in all Armstrong had got from the company on his own order no less than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for which he never accounted. "A thief!" exclaimed Hugo. "I might have known! These low-born fellows of no breeding, that rise by impudence and cunning, always steal."
Hugo did not go to his father with his startling discovery of this shameful raid on the sacred funds of the widows and orphans of the O.A.D. "I'll not worry the governor when he's ill," he reasoned. "Besides, he's far too gentle and easygoing with Armstrong. No, this is a matter for me to attend to, myself. When it's all over, the governor'll thank me. Anyhow, it's time I showed these people downtown that I understand the game and can play it." And Hugo sent for Armstrong.