"If I could force Sledge Hume to sell his inherited interest to me," she cried, "if I could make him sell to me as I sold to him, for a wretched twenty-five thousand dollars—"
"What!" he broke in excitedly. "How much did Hume pay you?"
"Twenty-five thousand. Why?" curiously.
"When?"
"I remember the date exactly."
She told him. It was barely two weeks after the death of Arthur Shandon.
Sudden suspicion in Wayne Shandon's brain had sprung full grown into positive certainty.
"If you can't get your property back one way," was the last thing he said, "I can get it for you in another. Helga Strawn, you had better leave Sledge Hume to me."