“Myself! I have enjoyed Mr. Carr’s advice through so many years that I feel I have a fair knowledge of the law. We have both,”—and he indicated Morris by a gesture—“we have both enjoyed the instruction of an excellent preceptor,” and he bowed over his hands. “Well, sir!”
“I have just happened to learn of a deed given by you to the Patoka Land and Improvement Company for a block of lots lying south of town. Of course, it is a pure oversight, but you neglected to get an order of court, approving the sale. I thought I would mention it to you. It is a sale of some importance. And now I am sure you will pardon me.”
Morris turned toward the door, but the old man rose and extended his hand.
“Ah,” he began, with a droll air of coquetry, “we have had the same preceptor! You have a capital eye, Mr. Leighton. I quite admire it in you; and I thank you. I am aware of the provision you indicate. But I have provided for it. The judge is away from home just now and the gentlemen to whom I have sold were anxious to get title without delay. It doesn’t look quite regular, I admit. My duties as trustee are nearly at an end. Only a few days more of responsibility. We will make a new deed if necessary,—but the purchaser will be protected. We are all—all honorable men!”
“Very good, sir; I am sorry to have disturbed you,”—and Leighton went out. Dameron’s manner had been odd; the old man had frequently spoken to him at home, but usually with cold formality; but his greeting a moment before had been with exuberant cordiality. Morris had never quite made Dameron out, and he was not satisfied with an explanation that the poorest lawyer at the Mariona bar would reject instantly. And the old man had deliberately lied about the absence of the judge of the court, whom Morris had seen but a few hours before.
Morris had often thought of the old man during the past year as of a gray shadow that haunted Zelda Dameron, grim and despicable but inevitably linked to the girl’s life. He must save Zelda from the consequences of her father’s acts if he could. It was out of the question for him to approach her with a warning against her father; but he would go to her uncle; and he walked directly to Rodney Merriam’s house in Seminary Square.
As the door closed on Leighton, Dameron went to an adjoining office and asked a neighbor’s errand boy to carry a note for him. He scrawled a few words bidding Balcomb come to the Dameron Block at once on urgent business.
The bubble that Ezra Dameron had blown upon the air was near the end of its perilous voyage. His dream of corn at a dollar a bushel—a dream wrought of the filmiest shadows—was dispelled. The danger of a great destruction of corn by mid-September frosts had passed. A member of the Chicago firm of brokers through whom he had been trading, had called that day, having paid a visit to Mariona merely to see what manner of man it was who had cast money upon the waters so prodigally, maintaining a fantastic dream of values at the expense of a small fortune.
“This year—this year—the elements were against us, my dear sir; but another year all will be well. There shall be no corn in Egypt,” declared Dameron, shaking his head sagely.
And the broker went away mystified, but fully believing that another man had gone mad over the great game. The contracts for October delivery which Ezra Dameron had been carrying had availed him nothing. Throughout the vast areas of the corn belt the security of the golden yield was assured. The crop was enormous; there was no more chance of corn going to a dollar than of the sun and moon reversing their places and functions in the heavens.