"Has he, indeed?" he said, with a lift of his eyebrows.
Carolina noticed his manner with a slight inward start of surprise. What could he be thinking of? She had known Noel all her life, and not once had the idea Sherman's tone suggested entered her mind. Noel St. Quentin? She dismissed the thought with impatience. Sherman did not know what he was talking about.
"I have not yet told you," he broke out suddenly, "how the money was lost. Have you no idea? You ought to know. You warned me against the man, but I refused to believe you."
Carolina leaned forward and her eyes blazed.
"Not Colonel Yancey?" she half-whispered.
Her brother nodded.
"Tell me," she said, with white lips.
"There is very little to tell. The whole thing was an elaborate lie--a swindle from one end to the other. I don't believe there ever was any oil on the lands he sold us. He swore there was, and bought outright the man I sent down to Texas to investigate. I could put him in jail, I suppose, but what good would that do me? Yancey says he has used all the money in speculation and lost it, so even to prosecute him would not get a penny back. Now he has disappeared--Algiers, I believe they say. It makes no difference where. He was so plausible, and his enthusiasm was so contagious, we kept handing over the money like born fools. I wonder that he did not laugh in our faces. But he deceived well. He planned from the ground up, and was ready with letters and witnesses of all sorts whenever we began to show signs of weakening. I can see it all now with fatal clearness. But then he had me thoroughly blinded by his own artful proceedings. He has wrecked two others besides myself. The other three men in the syndicate suspected him and sold out to Brainard and me. We continued to believe in him and he has ruined us."
Carolina listened in silence, dreading, yet waiting, for the next blow.
"He could be the most charming man in the world when he wanted to," Sherman continued. "I will admit that I felt his spell, but all the time there was something in his face which I distrusted. First I thought it was his shifty eyes, and then, as if he had read my thoughts, he would meet my glance with perfect candour and frankness and the craft would go to his lips, and when I looked again for it, I would be disarmed by the sincerity of his smile, so I was left to fall back on my Doctor Fell dislike of him, which always attacked me most strongly when I was not in his magnetic presence."