“Well,” said the lawyer, “you have returned. I saw a notice of your return in the Echo de Paris, and indeed, this very day I had promised myself the pleasure of calling on you. And how is Madame Berselius?”
“She is at Trouville.”
“I had it in my mind that you proposed to remain away twelve months.”
“Yes, but our expedition came to an end.”
Berselius, in a few words, told how the camp had been broken up, without referring, however, to his accident; and the fat and placid Cambon listened, pleased as a child with the tale. He had never seen an elephant except at the Jardin d’Acclimatation. He would have run from a milch-cow. Terrible in the law courts, in life he was the mildest of creatures, and the tale had all the attraction that the strong has for the weak and the ferocious for the mild.
But even as he listened, sitting there in his armchair, he was examining his visitor with minute attention, trying to discover some clue to the meaning of the change in him.
“And now,” said Berselius, when he had finished, “to business.”
He had several matters to consult the lawyer about, and the most important was the shifting of his money from the securities in which they were placed.
Cambon, who was a large holder of rubber industries, grew pale beneath his natural pallor when he discovered that Berselius was about to place his entire fortune elsewhere.
Instantly he put two and two together. Berselius’s quick return, his changed appearance, the fact that suddenly and at one sweep he was selling his stock. All these pointed to one fact—disaster.