"Are you sure, General?" he asked calmly.
General Bent clasped his twitching fingers to keep them still. "Why, sir—what do you mean?"
"That you're mistaken, that's all. That stock is for sale, but you'll still have to come to me to buy it."
"How——"
"Because I paid off those notes this morning. That stock is in my safe-deposit vault, where it's going to stay—unless"—and he smiled sarcastically—"unless you still want it."
General Bent's face paled and grew red, then purple. He struggled to his feet with difficulty. His plans didn't often miscarry, and the fact that one of the links of the chain he had tested so carefully had failed to hold completely mystified him. How—where had Jeff Wray succeeded in raising eight hundred thousand dollars when the limit of his borrowing capacity had long ago been reached? For months the wonderful secret organization of the Amalgamated had been at work prying into the affairs of Wray's companies and had figured his possible resources to the thinnest part of a hair. He had not sold the "Lone Tree" or even the smallest interest in it, and yet there he was apparently entrenched as firmly as ever. General Bent gasped in amazement. Only the interposition of Providence could have made such a thing possible. Cortland Bent had gone into the adjoining room suddenly, and Wray knew he was verifying this information over the telephone. But General Bent did not wait for him to return. To his mind this news needed no verification. It was time for him to play his last card—and his best.
"You d—d young scoundrel," he said in a hoarse whisper, his voice trembling with fury, while Wray and Berkely rose angrily and faced him. "I won't mince matters with you any longer. You thought when you stole that mine three years ago that you had covered all your tracks and made yourself safe from civil suits. Mr. Berkely planned well. We fought you in the courts and lost. I suppose you thought we had given up. We did let up, but it was only to get a firmer hold. We've got it now, and we're going to use it. You stole that mine—trespassed on our property at night and tried to murder one of our employes. You assaulted him and would have killed him if you hadn't been interrupted——"
"That's a lie!" said Jeff calmly.
"You'll have a chance to prove that. You lured Max Reimer into a gambling den and put him out of business so that he couldn't prevent my son from signing that lease."
"That's another lie! He was drunk and violent and drew a gun on me. My partner struck him down. His head hit the edge of a table."