"Then, I believe you missed a good thing." Blake seized upon the change of topic. "The shares would probably have paid you well. He found the oil, and put us on the track of it, though of course he didn't have any wish to do that. We expect to make a good deal out of the discovery."
"It looks like justice," Challoner declared. "But we are getting away from the point. I'd better tell you that after my talk with the man, I felt that 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. It 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 favors 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 on 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—the kind of comrades I've generally met—are charitable. As a rule, it wouldn't become them to be fastidious. Anyway, sir, you must see the absurdity of believing that Bertram could have failed in his duty in the way the tale suggests."