"And a steady friend, old man," added Gramont. "Did it occur to you that maybe I was as much in need of a friend as you were?"
He had come to the last box now, that which must go to Joseph Maillard. On top of the money and scarfpins which he placed in the box he laid a thin packet of papers. He tapped them with his finger.
"Those papers, sergeant! To get them, I've been playing the whole game. To get them and not to let their owner suspect that I was after them! Now they're going back to their owner."
"Who's he?" demanded Hammond.
"Young Maillard—son of the banker. He roped me into an oil company; caught me, like a sucker, almost the first week I was here. I put pretty near my whole wad into that company of his."
"You mean he stung you?"
"Not yet." Gramont smiled coldly, harshly. "That was his intention; he thought I was a Frenchman who would fall for any sort of game. I fell right enough—but I'll come out on top of the heap."
The other frowned. "I don't get you, cap'n. Some kind o' stock deal?"
"Yes, and no." Gramont paused, and seemed to choose his words with care. "Miss Ledanois, the lady who was driving with us this afternoon, is an old friend of mine. I've known for some time that somebody was fleecing her. I suspected that it was Maillard the elder, for he has had the handling of her affairs for some time past. Now, however, those papers have given me the truth. He was straight enough with her; his son was the man.
"The young fool imagines that by trickery and juggling he is playing the game of high finance! He worked on his father, made his father sell land owned by Miss Ledanois, and he himself reaped the profits. There are notes and stock issues among those papers that give his whole game away, to my eyes. Not legal evidence, as I had hoped, but evidence enough to show me the truth of things—to show me that he's a scoundrel! Further, they bear on my own case, and I'm satisfied now that I'd be ruined if I stayed with him."