“Certainly not. Harding would be much more likely to give him money than to take it from him. Here is the layout,” Brant went on, dropping unconsciously into the jargon of the craft in describing its processes; “Harding poses, let us say, as a gentleman of leisure. He lays siege to some tenderfoot with more money than brains, perhaps, but who isn’t altogether blind, and proposes a quiet game for amusement. If he worked it alone the rawest greenhorn of the lot might suspect a trap, but with your son as a third party the thing looks perfectly square. Don’t you see?”
The judge rose and walked slowly the length of the room with his hands behind him and his head bowed. When he looked up again the paternal anxiety in his face had given place to judicial severity.
“Yes, I see two things: One is, that you have a much worse opinion of my son than the facts, bad as they are, justify; and the other is, that you seem to have a—an unenviable familiarity with the methods you have been describing.”
Brant saw his error when it was too late, and tried to retrieve it.
“Don’t mistake me, Judge Langford. In such a case as I have been describing an inexperienced boy might well be an innocent accomplice—indeed, he would have to be to be of any use to his principal. And as to my knowledge, one learns much in the rough school of the frontier.”
The judge’s hand was on the doorknob.
“I can believe that; pardon me if I spoke hastily,” he said. “To be very frank with you, I am in deep trouble about William. If what you tell me about this man Harding be true, the boy is ruined.”
“Not necessarily,” Brant amended. “Harding has left the city; and if you can keep your son from forming another such intimacy——”
“How do you know Harding is gone?” interrupted the father.
“He went at my suggestion.”