Challoner did so and concluded: "Both these people have an obvious end to serve, and I daresay they're capable of misrepresenting things to suit it. I'll confess I found the thought comforting; but I want the truth, Dick. I must do what's right."
"In the first place, Clarke, who once approached me about the matter, will never trouble either of us again. I helped to bury him up in the wilds."
"Dead!" exclaimed Challoner.
"Frozen. In fact, it was not his fault we escaped his fate. He set a trap for us, intending that we should starve."
"But why?"
"His motive was obvious," Blake rejoined. "There was a man with us whose farm and stock would, in the event of his death, fall into Clarke's hands, and it's clear that I was a serious obstacle in his way. Can't you see that he couldn't use his absurd story to bleed you unless I supported it?"
Challoner felt the force of this. He was a shrewd man, but just then he was too disturbed to reason closely and failed to perceive that his nephew's refusal to confirm the story did not necessarily disprove it. That Clarke had thought it worth while to attempt his life bulked most largely in his uncle's eye.
"He urged me to take some shares in a petroleum syndicate," he remarked.
"Then I believe you missed a good thing, sir." Blake seized upon the change of topic. "The shares would probably have paid you well."
"I thought he proposed it to make the thing look better; in fact, to give me something to salve my conscience with."