“I tell you I was acting under orders from Shirley’s brother Tank in Cloverdale, Ohio. And if Dr. Carey hadn’t been so blamed quick I’d have gotten a letter Mrs. Tank Shirley had written to Jim the very day I got to Carey’s Crossing. No brother ever endured more from the hands of a relative than Tank Shirley endured from Jim. In every way Jim tried to defraud him of his rights; tried to prejudice their own father against him; tried to rob him of the girl, a rich girl, too, that he married in spite Of Jim—and at last contrived to prejudice his wife against him, and with Jane Aydelot interfering all the time, like the old maid that she is, managed to get Tank Shirley’s 192 only child away from him and given legally to Jim. Do you wonder Tank hates his brother? You wouldn’t if I dared to tell you all of Jim’s cussedness, but some things I’m sworn to secrecy on. That’s Tank’s streak of kindness he can’t overcome. Gets it from his mother. I’m his agent, and I’m paid for my work. You both understand me, I reckon.”
“We unterstant, an’ we stay py you to der ent,” Hans Wyker exclaimed enthusiastically. But Darley Champers had a different mind.
“I’ll watch you, my man, and I’ll do business with you accordin’,” he said to himself. “Devil knows whether you are Thomas Smith workin’ for Tank Shirley, or Tank Shirley workin’ for hisself under a assoomed name. Long as I get your capital to push my business I don’t care who you are.” Aloud he remarked:
“So that’s how Jim Shirley got that little girl. She’s a comely youngun, anyhow. But Smith, since you are only an agent and nobody knows it but us, why keep yourself so secret? Where’s the harm in letting Shirley lay eyes on you? Why not come out into the open? How’ll Shirley know you from the Mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, anyhow?”
Thomas Smith’s face was ashy and his voice was hoarse with anger as he replied:
“Because I’m not now from Wilmington, Delaware, any more than I ever was. I’m from Cloverdale, Ohio. You know, Wyker, how I lost money in your brewery, investing in machinery and starting the thing, only to go to smash on us.”
He turned on Hans fiercely. 193
“And you know how I lost by you in this town and the land around it. It was my money took up all this ground to help build up Wykerton and you, as my agent, sold every acre of it to Jacobs.”
This as fiercely as Darley Champers.
Both men nodded and Darley broke in: