“Too bad, old man,” said Turner, tremulously aghast. “Couldn’t help reading it.”
“My God!” exclaimed Wallingford most dramatically. “It has come at last, just as I had settled down to lead a quiet, decent, respectable life, with every prospect in my favor!” He sprang up and looked at his watch. “I’ll have to move on again!” he dismally declared; “and I suppose they’ll chase me from one cover to another until they finally get me; but I’ll never give up! Please see what’s coming to me, Mr. Turner; you have the cash in the house to pay me, I know; and kindly get my stock certificates from the safe.”
Slowly and thoughtfully Turner took from the safe Wallingford’s four hundred and ninety-seven shares of stock, in four certificates of a hundred shares each, one of fifty and one of forty-seven. Wallingford hurried them into an envelope, sitting down to write the address upon it.
“What are you going to do with those?” asked Turner with a thoughtful frown.
“Send them to my friend in Boston and have him sell them for what he can get,” replied Wallingford with a sigh. “If the purchasers send any one here to find out about the business, you’ll, of course, give them every facility for investigation.”
“To be sure; to be sure,” returned Turner. “But, say—”
He paused a moment, and Wallingford, in the act of writing a hasty note to go with the stock certificates, hesitated, his pen poised just above the paper.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You’ll probably have to sell those shares at a sacrifice, Wallingford.”
“I have no doubt,” he admitted.