“You surprise me very much,” said Noel Brooke after a brief pause.
“I thought I should, but I felt it to be my duty to warn you against Gerald. He is probably in confidential relations with you, and he might play some dishonest trick on you. I advise you, as soon as practicable, to discharge him and secure some one in his place on whom you can rely. I need only call your attention to the individual he is talking with at this moment. He looks like a confidence man.”
Samuel Standish had again joined Gerald, and to the boy’s disgust had almost forced his company upon him.
“That is a man whom we met at a hotel in Davenport, and he appears inclined to thrust himself upon us.”
Bradley Wentworth shrugged his shoulders and smiled in evident incredulity.
“At any rate,” he said, “I have warned you, and have done my duty.”
Noel Brooke bowed slightly, but did not feel called upon to make any other acknowledgment of Mr. Wentworth’s warning.
When Brooke had an opportunity he said to Gerald, “I have been talking to a man who claims to know you.”
“A tall, well-built man?”