Bromley laughed easily.
“There must be some mistake about that. Philip, himself, is the one who rushes around taking people by the neck.”
“You are off wrong, this time,” the promoter cut in shortly. “I don’t believe he has been entirely sober at any one time during the past two weeks, and he seems to be permeated with an idea that he can use up all the red paint there is and break all the gambling banks in the camp if he only sticks at it long enough.”
“Good heavens!” Bromley gasped; “not Philip!”
“Yes, Philip. Of course, I understand that it’s none of my business, but I hate to see such a fine, upstanding fellow as he is go to the devil in a hand-basket. Has he had trouble of any sort?”
Bromley took a moment to consider whether or not he had a right to breach Philip’s confidence in the matter of the search for his father, and decided quickly that the present crisis warranted it. Very briefly he told Drew the little he knew about the Trask family tragedy, and of the futile search Philip had been making.
“Ah,” said the shrewd-witted developer of mines, “that may be the clue. You say Philip believed in his father’s innocence?”
“Absolutely and utterly. But from what he has told me, I gathered that he was pretty much alone in that belief; that, as a matter of fact, not even the other members of the family shared it.”
“I see. Then that may be the key to the present situation. Trask is pretty sensitive on the family honor question, and all that, isn’t he?”
“Exceedingly so. It, and his conscience, are his little tin gods.”