The man flushed, but answered nothing.
“About eleven years ago,” began Mr. Williams, “two men lived in Bingham who were friends. One was a clerk in a bank, the other was a steel manufacturer who was experimenting to find a better way to make his product. He did, indeed, discover a new and valuable process, but at a time when his fortunes were at a low ebb, and all his resources, save a few hundred dollars, had been exhausted. Being unable to form a company in America to manufacture his steel under the new process he decided to go to Birmingham, England, where he thought he would have a better opportunity to interest capitalists. He divided his remaining money into two parts, taking half with him and leaving the remainder with his friend to be applied for the use of his wife and three children until he could send for them to join him, or return himself to support them. This man, whom he thought he could trust, promised faithfully to care for his friend’s family as if they were his own.”
Mr. Jordan was now regarding the narrator with interest, but there was an amused and slightly scornful smile upon his thin lips.
“The inventor—let us call him John Carden—sailed on a White Star steamer to England,” resumed Mr. Williams; “but that fact was known only to his friend, who did not advertise it. Instead, he watched the newspapers, and when he saw that a sailing vessel, the Pleiades, which left New York about the same time that Carden did, had foundered at sea and gone down with all hands on board, he went to the wife of his friend with well-assumed horror and told her that her husband had been upon this sailing ship, and was now dead. He even showed a letter in her husband’s handwriting, carefully forged, stating that he had arranged to sail on the Pleiades from motives of economy. And here was a newspaper report of the vessel’s loss. A very pretty plot to get rid of John Carden, and it succeeded perfectly. Not only was all Bingham soon aware that Carden was lost at sea, but slanderous stories were circulated that he had run away to escape his creditors, and also that he owned his false friend, Ezra Jordan, ten thousand dollars, which he had borrowed to carry on his experiments—a story which Mr. Jordan himself confirmed with hypocritical sighs.”
“Sir, you are insulting!” cried Jordan, springing to his feet with a livid face. “I will hear no more of this lying tale.”
“Sit down!” was the stern command. “You must hear it either from me or in a court of justice—perhaps both, before we are done.”
Mr. Jordan sat down.
“I am not sure that you realize the full horror of this abominable crime,” resumed Mr. Williams. “It transformed a bright and happy woman—happy—despite their impending poverty—in her husband’s love, into a brokenhearted, crushed and desolate widow, whose only incentive to drag her weary way through life was the necessity of caring for her fatherless little ones. It was worse than murder, sir, for it prolonged for years the suffering of a human heart.”
For a moment he paused, and in the stillness that ensued the doctor could be heard muttering dreadful words, as if to himself. Indeed, he could not trust himself to look at Mr. Jordan, who sat as motionless as if turned to stone.
“Before Carden went away,” continued Mr. Williams, suddenly arousing himself and speaking in a sharp, clear tone, “he left in a sealed envelope an exact description of his secret process for making steel, and gave it into his friend’s keeping with instructions that it must not be opened unless he met with sudden death. In that case Jordan was to lease or sell the process for the benefit of Carden’s family.”