The young man paid no heed to the request, but remained standing, with his hand resting on the back of a chair, as he began, in an apparently calm tone, "You sent me over the estimates and calculations which are to serve as the basis of the transfer of the railway to the stockholders."
"I did. You remember I told you that I would spare you the details of these calculations. You have enough to do in attending to the technical conduct of the work. All you have to do is to look over and approve the estimates, your word as engineer-in-chief being decisive."
"I am aware of that,--entirely aware of my responsibility in the matter, and therefore I wish to put a question to you: Who made these estimates?"
Nordheim glanced in surprise at his future son-in-law; the question evidently astonished him.
"Who? Why, my clerks and those who understand such matters."
"That is not what I mean, sir. They simply made up the figures from the memoranda and calculations furnished them. What I want to know is, whose were those memoranda?--who put down the sums which are the basis of the estimates? It cannot possibly have been yourself."
"Indeed? And why not, may I ask?"
"Because all the accounts are falsified!" Wolfgang said, coldly but very decidedly.
"Falsified? What do you mean?"
"Is it possible that it escaped you?" Elmhorst asked, never taking his eyes from the president. "I discovered it at a glance. All the buildings are estimated at almost double the cost of their erection, and stations are brought into the calculations which do not exist. The obstacles and catastrophes that impeded us are reckoned up in an incredible fashion, as causing an outlay of hundreds of thousands where not half the amount was expended. In short, the whole sum exceeds by some millions the actual cost of the undertaking."