“Too bad, old fellow,” consoled Joe, who was moved to pity by the distress that showed in his friend’s face. “What happened then?”
“He went away a few days later,” continued Reggie. “Had to go to Raleigh, he said, to see some members of the legislature. He wrote to me every few days and told me he was getting along famously. Then his letters stopped. I didn’t think so much of this at first, because I knew he would be tremendously busy putting through the deal. But when three weeks passed without hearing from him I got uneasy. I wrote to him to the address of Morgan & Company, thinking they would of course know his whereabouts and forward his mail to him, and you can imagine how I felt when I got my letter back marked ‘Not here.’ I wrote then to the firm direct, and asked about Talham Tabbs. They wrote back promptly that Tabbs had once been employed by them and that they had valued him as one of their most competent men, but that a year before he had gone suddenly insane and had to be committed to an asylum. They gave me the name of the asylum so that I could write there if I wished to learn anything further about his condition, although they had been informed that his case was thought to be incurable.
“I tell you what, old man, that knocked me all in a heap. My ten thousand dollars had been put in the care of a crazy man, who, for all I knew, had turned the securities into cash and by this time might be in Canada, or Europe, or South America, or any old place.”
“It must have been a knockout blow,” said Joe.
“For a little while I thought I would go crazy myself,” continued Reggie. “I couldn’t eat or sleep, and the folks saw there was something the matter with me. Mabel was worried out of her head, and tried to get me to tell her what was the trouble.”
“Just like Mabel,” thought Joe to himself, conscious of a sudden warmth in the region of his heart.
“I think the governor rather suspected that something had gone wrong in a money way,” continued Reggie. “But he’s a thoroughbred, and since he had said he wouldn’t ask me about it for a year, he stuck to his promise.”
“Couldn’t you pick up any clue as to Tabbs’ whereabouts?” queried Joe.
“Not a thing for a long while,” was the answer. “Of course, I was handicapped because I had to keep everything under cover. The first thing I did was to make a trip to the asylum where he had been confined. The superintendent told me that Tabbs had escaped about two months before. Said he was one of the brightest and ablest men that had ever been confined there. There would be weeks at a time when he would appear to be as sane as any man. Then he would have sudden fits of violence come upon him, when they couldn’t do anything with him and had to truss him up in a strait-jacket to keep him from harming the other inmates. I suppose he must have had one of those spells come on him when he carried off the baby.”