"I know the story in a general way, that's all. It does not interest me."
"Let me tell you the facts."
In his brief, colorless sentences Jefferson Worth related the incidents of that trip across the desert, and as he did so Greenfield began to realize that some powerful motive had brought this man to him and was forcing him to relate his story with such exact care for the details.
"And you never found the slightest clue even to the child's name?" he asked, when Worth had finished.
Jefferson Worth hesitated, then: "Mr. Greenfield, you had a younger brother who came West?"
The man gazed at the speaker in amazement as he answered mechanically. "Yes. He died out here somewhere—in California, I believe. I was never able to learn the details. He was an adventurous lad and a good deal of a rover. But why—how—" As the full import of the question dawned upon him Greenfield started from his seat. "My God, man! You don't mean—you cannot mean that it was my brother Will who was lost in that sandstorm on the desert? That the woman you found by the water hole was his wife, Gertrude, and that—that—" His voice sank to a whisper. "Will wrote me that there was a child—that she had Gertrude's hair and eyes. I had never seen her." He turned fiercely upon his companion. "And you have kept this from me all these years? You have kept my only brother's child from me? By God, sir! I—But perhaps this is all one of your damnable tricks. What proof have you that this is so, and if it is, why have you kept it a secret?"
Jefferson Worth opened his satchel and laid the tin box on the desk before the president of The King's Basin Land and Irrigation Company. "This box was found this afternoon by Texas Joe and Pat, who brought it to me. I opened it. It is all here."
When Greenfield had examined the contents of the box—letters, some of them written by himself to his brother, papers relating to William Greenfield's business affairs and property, and photographs of the little family and of the two brothers and their parents, he looked up to see Jefferson Worth sitting motionless, his form relaxed, his head dropped forward.
[Illustration: Without a word—for no word was needed—their hands met in a firm grip ]
Suddenly the words of the man who had been a father to his brother's child came back to Greenfield. "My girl is just as much to me as young Holmes is to you. You are not going to lose your boy, but I am going to lose my girl." In a flash the financier saw it all—saw how Jefferson Worth loved Barbara as his own child, as Greenfield cared for Willard Holmes; saw how Worth might have destroyed the papers so strangely brought to light and kept the secret; saw and realized a little what strength of character it had taken to overcome the temptation, and felt what the man was suffering.