The facts had to come out. Once started, Morey concealed nothing.
The officer laughed.
“Morey,” he exclaimed, “you’ll certainly win out. I don’t blame you. You were more than welcome here, but I suppose I would feel the same way that you do. However, if you run out of funds before something turns up, remember this—I accepted your hospitality as to the trout stream.”
Morey laughed in turn.
“That was in my foolish days. We didn’t own any more of that trout creek than you did.”
Within an hour after luncheon the officer and Morey were in the city and in a well-known real estate and loan office. A clerk passed them on to Lieutenant Purcell’s friend, who gave Morey’s long story his personal attention. The manager began shaking his head at once. But, when Morey mentioned Major Carey and the Barber Bank, he took a new attitude. Turning to his desk he looked in an index and then, excusing himself, went into the outer office and after some minutes returned with several documents.
“Do you know the Hargrave farm of one hundred and twenty acres,” he asked, calling Morey over to his desk.
“I don’t know how many acres he had,” answered Morey, “but Mr. Hargrave used to live next to our corn land. Don’t any one live there now?”
The manager turned to Lieutenant Purcell.
“The old Richmond Trust Company made a good many peculiar loans out there in Rappahannock County. It loaned this man Appleton, who had a tobacco piece, five thousand dollars on one hundred and twenty acres. It sold the mortgage to a client of ours and he had to foreclose. I thought I recalled the transaction when your friend mentioned the Barber Bank and this man Carey. Carey bought the land less than a year ago and paid forty dollars an acre for it.”