“H-how is th-that, sir?” asked Tommy, and he could have killed himself for the stammering and the huskiness that made his own voice sound guilty. And Thompson—was Thompson no longer a friend?
Thompson looked at Tommy with a meditative expression that had in it enough accusation to make Tommy square his shoulders and look Mr. Thompson full in the eyes.
“I have followed your orders to the best of my ability. You knew how little I knew.” Tommy's voice was firm.
“You can't even guess what makes me say what I have said to you?” Thompson's voice did not express incredulity, but it was not pleasant.
“No, sir. I know it's a mistake of some sort, and I am afraid it must be something serious to make you speak the way you do. But I also know I have done nothing since I came here—or before I came here—that I wouldn't tell you.”
“Nothing?” persisted Thompson.
“Nothing,” said Tommy, firmly, “for which you can hold me personally responsible.” There was only one thing that he had not told Thompson, and he was not to blame for it, though he expected to suffer for it and always had expected it.
For the first—and the last—time in his life Tommy actually saw Mr. Thompson shake his head as if puzzled.
“Holland received by express from New York this morning the twenty stock certificates of a hundred shares each made out to John B. Kendrick. A letter came with them from Colonel van Schaick Willetts requesting us to transfer on our books eighteen hundred shares, as per indorsement, to one man, and the new certificates turned over to that one man and a receipt therefor obtained from him and sent to New York. Do you know the name of that one man?”
“No, sir, unless it was Colonel Willetts himself.”