There was a short silence.
“Sharp cuss, that Mr. Hanna!” said a man sitting on the steps.
“Why, I reckon he’s all right,” said Ferrell indulgently. “Great friend of the Power boys. He come here soon after they got the place. Northern man, seems to be, and knows his way round all the big cities, I reckon. Likely it was him put the boys up to all them fancy drinks. They never knowed nothing about such things before.”
“Well, I’d like to know the Power boys,” Lockwood remarked carelessly.
“Why, you do know ’em!” Ferrell exclaimed with amazement. “Wasn’t you introduced to ’em both right here? They’ll expect you to go and see ’em—visit ’em if you can, and stay as long as you like. We ain’t got no Northern ways down here in the piny woods.”
This theory of reckless hospitality did not, however, deter Mr. Ferrell from accepting fifty cents from Lockwood for his breakfast. Lockwood waited and smoked on the gallery as the forenoon wore on. He wanted to get another look at the Power boys; certainly he would call on them if he saw any opening. He was not afraid that McGibbon—or Hanna—would recognize him. His face was thinner and darker and had, he thought, totally changed in expression. His hair had grizzled. In the old days, too, he had worn a small, pointed beard and mustache; and he now went clean shaven.
But the big car did not return from the landing. As he waited and meditated, the balance of Lockwood’s purpose changed a little. He thought he saw light in the situation. There might be good hunting here after all, for a bird of prey. He imagined Hanna arriving in this wilderness, suave, dignified, experienced, swooping down upon these newly rich poor whites, and he imagined the tremendous weight and influence the man would carry.
Even so McGibbon had swooped down upon him at Melbourne, seven years ago—handsome, dignified, wise, with an apparently vast experience of men and affairs, and Lockwood had fallen under the impression, though he had had considerable experience of men and affairs himself. He had a real-estate business at that time in Melbourne, Virginia, a fast-growing city, and his business was growing with it.
The two men became friends, and soon were in practical partnership, though no legal partnership was ever established. Lockwood was an excellent salesman of real-estate, but a timid speculator, and incapable of the intricacies of office detail and bookkeeping. It was in these last that McGibbon excelled. In fact, the expert accountants at the trial had been obliged to confess themselves baffled by some of the extraordinary complications of figures with which McGibbon had covered up his tracks.
Looking back, Lockwood saw that the man must have been bleeding the business all along, though to this day he did not understand all the methods employed. Nor did he yet have any positive proof that Maxwell was McGibbon’s confederate—Maxwell, smooth, hard, close-mouthed, but with eyes and ears open for real-estate opportunities. He had got them, too. McGibbon had seen to that.