“You heard what I said?” queried Wendover, brusquely, after a moment’s pause.
“Undoubtedly I did,” answered Horace. “But—but its application escaped me.”
“What I mean is”—the Judge hesitated for a moment to note Tenney’s mute signal of dissuasion, and then went on: “We might as well not beat about the bush—what I mean is that there’s a penitentiary job in this thing for somebody, unless we all keep our heads, and have good luck to boot. You’ve done your best to get us all into a hole, with your confounded airs and general foolishness. If worse comes to worst, perhaps we can save ourselves, but there won’t be a ghost of a chance for you. I’ll see to that myself. If we come to grief, you shall pay for it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Horace, in a subdued tone, after a period of silent reflection. “Where does the penitentiary part come in?”
“I don’t agree with the Judge at all,” interposed Tenney, eagerly. “I don’t think there’s any need of looking on the dark side of the thing. We don’t know that Tracy knows anything. And then, why shouldn’t we be able to get our own man appointed receiver?”
“This is the situation,” said Wendover, speaking deliberately. “You advised Mrs. Minster to borrow four hundred thousand dollars for the purchase of certain machinery patents, and you drew up the papers for the operation. It happens that she already owned—or rather that the Mfg. Company already owned—these identical rights and patents. They were a part of the plant and business we put into the company at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars when we moved over from Cadmus. But nobody on her side, except old Clarke, knew just what it was that we put in. He died in Florida, and it was arranged that his papers should pass to you. There was no record that we had sold the right of the nail machine.”
Horace gazed with bewilderment into the hard-drawn, serious faces of the two men who sat across the little table from him. In the yellow lamplight these countenances looked like masks, and he searched them in vain for any sign of astonishment or emotion. The thing which was now for the first time being put into words was strange, but as it shaped itself in his mind he did not find himself startled. It was as if he had always known about it, but had allowed it to lapse in his memory. These men were thieves—and he was their associate! The room with its central point of light where the three knaves were gathered, and its deepening shadows round about, suggested vaguely to him a robber’s cave. Primary instincts arose strong within him. Terror lest discovery should come yielded precedence to a fierce resolve to have a share of the booty. It seemed minutes to him before he spoke again.
“Then she was persuaded to mortgage her property, to buy over again at four times its value what she had already purchased?” he asked, with an assumption of calmness.
“That seems to be about what you managed to induce her to do,” said the Judge, dryly.
“Then you admit that it was I who did it—that you owe the success of the thing to me!” The young man could not restrain his eagerness to establish this point. He leaned over the table, and his eyes sparkled with premature triumph.