"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I wasn't much behind you in getting the information. I heard about it this afternoon on the street."
"On the street!" I exclaimed. "It was told to me as a profound secret." It seemed an altogether perplexing thing that the information that Clark had considered it death to reveal should be the talk of commercial San Francisco.
"Well," said Wharton Kendrick with a smile, "if it's a secret it's one that needs a good deal of help in keeping it. I heard it from a dozen different directions."
"There will be some astonished men in the Council if they hear of this report," I said.
A grim smile wrinkled Wharton Kendrick's ruddy cheeks, and drove for a moment the thoughtful look from his eyes. He put his hands in his pockets and threw himself back in his chair.
"Well," he said, "you can expect them to have an attack of heart disease at the breakfast-table then. It will all be in the papers in the morning. But, to tell the truth, I got the impression that the nine members of the Council and all their friends were giving their afternoon to circulating the report."
I was a little piqued at the staleness of my information.
"Since you are so well-posted about the purchase of the rifles--" I began.
"The alleged purchase of the rifles," interrupted Wharton Kendrick.
"The purchase of the rifles," I repeated. "I suppose I don't need to tell you where the money came from to pay for them."