Storm drew a long breath.
“But this—Du Chainat is all right, you say?” he stammered. “His proposition was legitimate?”
“Absolutely. He must have taken this Martens into his confidence, shown him his papers and left them where the crook could get at them, for Martens forged a duplicate set,—they found the stacks of counterfeit government deeds and grants, both Belgian and French, in his room to-day together with official letter-heads from the consulates,—and then when Du Chainat returned to France he impersonated him. Du Chainat had put through his loan all right with Whitmarsh.”
“When——” Storm moistened his dry lips. “When did this Du Chainat leave America?”
“Three weeks ago, according to the paper. The impostor was only exposed through a woman, too, a rich widow whom he approached yesterday with his proposition; but he didn’t take into consideration the fact that she had lived abroad. As it happened, she knew the Du Chainat family in Lille, but by the time she made up her mind to risk notoriety and inform the police of the attempted swindle the bird had flown.”
He paused, but Storm had heard only the first three words of his utterance. “Three weeks ago”! And only a week had passed since he handed to the bogus Du Chainat every cent he had in the world! It couldn’t be true! There must be some hideous mistake!
“Here, it’s all in the paper. I was reading about it while I waited for you. Want to see it?”
George picked up the newspaper from the table where he had dropped it on entering, and Storm seized it, hoping blindly, doggedly against all hope. His luck could not have deserted him! Fate would not play him such a ghastly trick now!
But the headlines stared at him in uncompromising type, and the article itself left no room for doubt. He had been despoiled of his only means of freedom! Penniless, he was chained forever to the environs of the past, to the friends who had been Leila’s, the life of which she had been a part. The curse was upon him, and he might not even flee from the memories which dogged him! He was bound hand and foot, held fast!