Doyle's face sufficiently showed his bewilderment. Inwardly he wondered whether it was Gordon or himself whose brain was giving way. After a moment's pause Gordon continued, half, it seemed, as if to himself.
"You're the only man who's ever going to know the inside of this; this—and one other thing. The two are inseparably connected, as they say in books. Well, here's the story. You've heard gossip about my wife and Ogden?"
Doyle nodded reluctantly. Who, indeed, had not?
Gordon nodded in turn. "I supposed so," he said dryly. "And I suppose, further, you've wondered at my inaction. Before this gossip started, I made a deal with Ogden, by which he lent me a very large sum of money to use in engineering a stock deal I'll be coming to in a few moments. It was demand money, unfortunately, and Ogden, like the thorough gentleman he is, made use of the fact that he knew I needed it, to go on dancing attendance on my wife and getting her name coupled with his, feeling sure that I wouldn't be in a position to act, or even complain. Clever, I think. Don't you?"
Doyle's lip curled. "Clever!" he cried. His tone was enough. Gordon smiled.
"There, there," he said, "don't take me too seriously. I'm never serious, these days. Life's too amusing. Well, now we come to the side-splitting humor. The real reason my wife took French leave, as you've just read in her touching little farewell, is that she couldn't endure life with a poor man. That was the phrase, wasn't it?"
Doyle nodded again. Uneasily he began to think that Gordon, under the strain, was going mad. Yet his chief's tone, when he spoke again, was sane enough, even pleasantly indifferent.
"I'm afraid," he said, "that my poor wife decided too quickly. As far as Ogden is concerned, his wealth has been grossly overestimated. To-day he isn't worth over three millions, and while it's too long a story to bother you with now, the substance of it is that, thanks to this wild trip of his, I've got the information, I've got the men in my power, and, best of all, I've got the resources to make the man a beggar, so that long before he gets ready to come home, he'll be glad some fine morning to sneak into the poor debtor court and take that means of getting rid of his creditors."
Again Doyle's fears returned. Gordon, himself a hopeless bankrupt, sitting there and stating calmly that he had the resources to put a multimillionaire into bankruptcy. Possibly something of Doyle's thought showed on his expressive face. At all events, Gordon smiled.
"Well," he said. "I mustn't have all the enjoyment. It isn't fair to keep you away from the point so long." He picked up the paper covered with the neat little figuring, and almost lovingly glanced over it once more. Then he handed it across the table to Doyle.