"Anyway, he found the oil and put us on the track of it, though I don't suppose he had any wish to do the latter. We expect to make a good deal out of the discovery."
"It looks like justice," said Challoner. "But we are getting away from the point. I'd better tell you that after my talk with the man I felt he might be dangerous and that I must send for you."
"Why didn't you send for Bertram?"
Challoner hesitated. "When I cabled out instructions to find you, there was no word of his leaving India; then you must see how hard it would have been to hint at my suspicions. This would have opened a breach between us that could never be closed."
"Yes," said Blake, leaning forward on the table and speaking earnestly, "your reluctance was very natural. I'm afraid of presuming too far, but I can't understand how you could believe this thing of your only son."
"It lies between my son and my nephew, Dick."
There was emotion in the Colonel's voice. "I had a great liking for your father and I brought you up. Then I took a keen pride in you; there were respects in which I found you truer to our type than Bertram."
"You heaped favours on me," Blake replied. "That I bitterly disappointed you has been my deepest shame; in fact, it's the one thing that counts. For the rest, I can't regret the friends who turned their backs on me, and poverty never troubled the Blakes."
"But the taint—the stain upon your name!"
"I have the advantage of bearing it alone, and, to tell the truth, it doesn't bother me much. That a man should go straight in the present is all they ask in Canada, and homeless adventurers with no possessions, which is the kind of comrades I've generally met, are charitable. As a rule, it wouldn't become them to be fastidious. Anyhow, sir, you must see the absurdity of believing that Bertram could have failed in his duty in the way these tales suggest."