“Oh, dear,” cried the nervous one, pacing the floor, “I honestly don’t know. I don’t see my way. Why did Delavan ever allow himself to get into such a dreadful mess? If he had followed my advice——”
“If your advice is any good, sir,” put in Tom, crisply, “it ought to be useful, just now, in finding out the way to extricate Mr. Delavan from his present troubles. Now, what ought to be the first step?”
With most men Halstead would have thought himself presuming to go so far. But the case was tremendously pressing, and it took more than a little to get Eben Moddridge started.
By slow degrees Moddridge pulled himself together. He wouldn’t hear to calling in the reporters and making the whole story public as far as it was known.
“The public would regard it all as a cock-and-bull invention, gotten up to hide Delavan’s supposed flight,” the nervous one rather sensibly declared. “And, if we were to drag Bolton’s name in, Bolton would be very likely to give us the trouble of proving the whole story, mostly on your unsupported word, Halstead, with a little corroboration, of course, from your very eccentric new steward—Butts, did you call him? Besides, if Frank Delavan were here, I think he would prefer to scheme secretly to punish Justin Bolton, instead of going after him openly.”
“Who is this Bolton?” asked Tom Halstead.
“A man whom Delavan helped to make the start of his fortune. But Bolton is unscrupulous and dangerous; Frank had to drop him years ago.”
The idea of sending for detectives Eben Moddridge also declined to entertain.
“No matter how secretly we may think we hire detectives,” he objected, “it is pretty sure to leak out. The Wall Street public would take that as a sensational feature, and P. & Y. would drop lower than ever in the market. No, no, Halstead; we won’t think of hiring detectives until we have tried other means. Now, what remains to be done!”