“I would have thought that life with such a man as Farbush would have been far from pleasant.”
“He was never really unkind until lately. Indeed, he has always been rather inclined to be generous. You see he had social pretensions; he entertained a great deal, and Anna and I were useful. And, then, all his life Mr. Farbush has been regarded as a model of integrity.”
“I fancy that you believed this of him and the others—at first.”
“Yes; Mr. Austin had always been eccentric, and when, toward the last, he began to whisper to me of his partners’ plotting against him, I thought it must be the result of his age and his illness—that his suspicions were imaginings.”
“He made a confidante of you, then?”
“Always; but especially so during his last illness. I believe he told me everything, including the whereabouts of his grandson, Philip Austin. He always insisted that his partners would endeavor to accomplish the death of Philip after he, old Mr. Austin, had passed away.”
“So that Philip’s cousin, Scott, would come into the business?”
“Yes. It appears that Philip had expressed himself as being against certain illegal features of the trade; but Scott had no such scruples. Indeed, he would have been more likely to have tried to extend them than otherwise. But Mr. Austin would whisper these things to me; no one ever suspected that I was so entirely in his confidence.”
“But you did not consider the things told you as being worthy of serious consideration. That is, you did not really suspect the partners of wrong doing.”
“None but Hong Yo. I disliked him from the first. Griscom Forrester I always regarded as honest—but rather weak. Mr. Farbush I did not suspect for an instant, until he denied knowledge of the securities which Mr. Austin had entrusted to him. It was then that I first became convinced that there was really something wrong. I demanded to be allowed to search the safe in Mr. Farbush’s office. He laughed at me, but I could see that he was astonished at my knowledge, and frightened also. Then I determined to appeal to Griscom Forrester. I followed him one night, that I might have a chance to speak to him, privately. At Union Square he began to trail after a man who had just passed. It was you, and the fact startled me.”