“Seneca, Illinois, September 7.
“Sir: Thomas Hastings,
“I have already warned you that you have annoyed me sufficiently, and that I should pay no further attention to your letters. Yet you persist in writing to me and demanding money. On what grounds? You claim to be acquainted with a secret now many years old, and threaten to divulge it unless I will send you money. What you have to tell is of no value whatever. The man to whom you want to reveal it is dead, and his son is dead also. There is absolutely no one who takes any interest in your threatened revelation. When I think of the sums of money which I have sent you in the aggregate I am provoked with myself for my weakness. You ought to be in comfortable circumstances, but you write me that you are destitute and that your wife and child are on the verge of starvation. Well, this is not my fault. It is largely the result of your inordinate love of drink. A man like you ought never to have married. You can’t take care of yourself, much less can you care for a family.
“I have wasted more words upon you than I intended. As, however, this is the last letter I ever expect to write you, I determined to make myself understood. Let me repeat, then, you have nothing to expect from me. You have exhausted my patience, and I have no more money to send you. If you can’t support yourself in any other way, go out and work by the day, and let your wife take in washing. It is an honest business, and will help to keep the wolf from the door. In any event, don’t write again to me.
“Bradley Wentworth.”
Gerald read this letter in ill-suppressed excitement. He could not misunderstand these words, referring to the secret of which this man had knowledge. “The man to whom you want to reveal it is dead, and his son is dead also.” He, the son, was not dead, but it suited Bradley Wentworth to represent that he was. What could this secret be? It must, he felt, relate to the “debt of honor,” and to the forgery which Wentworth had succeeded in laying upon the shoulders of his friend and associate.
Hastings must possess some information of great value, or Bradley Wentworth would not have sent the sums of money referred to in the letter. Clearly it was for Gerald’s interest to see Thomas Hastings, and learn what he could. He was quite in the dark as to the nature of his information, but it was unquestionably of importance. It seemed as if Providence had directed his steps to this out-of-the-way town in Minnesota, and he resolved to take advantage of his visit.
He sauntered up to the desk and in a voice of affected unconcern inquired, “Can you tell me where the man Hastings lives?”
“Are you interested in him?” asked the clerk, smilingly.
“Yes, somewhat. He looked so sad and woebegone. I might perhaps help him to a position if I could have a conversation with him and judge of his abilities.”