An injured, plaintive note had crept into his patient voice, and in a sudden access of hope Storm seized upon his opportunity.
“You haven’t failed me, dear old George! It was my accursed pride, as usual. I wouldn’t admit it to Griffiths for worlds, but I did pretty nearly fall for that fellow’s bunk! When you showed me that the whole thing was a swindle I was aghast at my narrow escape, and I made up my mind I wouldn’t give you the chance to preach at me again about reckless investments. If I had told you how nearly I came to letting Du Chainat hoodwink me you would have been as worried as a maiden aunt about any future venture I might want to make, and I didn’t care to have you know what an ass I had been!” His tone was a perfect simulation of shame-faced confidence. “Millard might have told you that I knew the pseudo Du Chainat. He introduced me to him himself, and if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Millard, who holds the purse strings, the old boy would have been one of Du Chainat’s victims. He was strong for the scheme, but for once I had a gleam of sense and held out.”
George shook his head.
“I’m sorry if I have seemed to preach at you,” he said. “Your money is your own, of course, to do with as you please, and you are a man grown, but you have always been to me the impulsive, reckless boy I knew at college——”
“Whom you helped out of many a scrape!” Storm put in quickly. “You don’t think I have ever forgotten, do you, old man? It wasn’t lack of confidence, but fear of ‘I told you so’ that prevented me from telling you what I knew personally of Du Chainat. Griffiths was all wrong in that, however. Du Chainat may have put me down for a boob, but I never dropped a cent in his scheme.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” George remarked earnestly, but to Storm’s apprehensive ear there was the same hint of skepticism in his voice that the lawyer’s had evinced, and he burst out recklessly:
“Look here, you don’t think I am holding out on you now, do you? You don’t think I was such a fool? If I had put all my capital in Du Chainat’s hands, and he had taken it to the bottom of the sea with him, where on earth would I have gotten the money for this long trip I proposed taking or investment in a new concern when I got back?”
He could have bitten his tongue out the instant the words had left his lips. What a consummate fool to open the way for suspicion to enter George’s mind, if it were not there already! But while he sat inwardly cursing himself for his mad indiscretion, the other’s face cleared as if by magic.
“Of course, Norman! I have been worrying a little for the last hour, but I might have known you hadn’t gone into the scheme, for it would have pretty well cleaned you out, wouldn’t it? Now that you are going to stay on at the trust company——” he broke off and added: “I’m sure that you are! Our fishing trip will buck you up wonderfully, and you’ll come back in fine form!”
“I hope so.” Storm breathed freely. The danger point was past! But he must cinch it in the other’s mind . . . . “I’ve still got my capital, you know; what there is left of it from that copper gamble two years ago.”