“I have seen a copy of the original at the abstracter’s office.”
“Awfully keen of you, I’m sure,” said Balcomb, amiably. “I tell you, you’re a credit to the bar, Morris. You do honor to your preceptor.”
He bowed mockingly, but he was growing a trifle anxious and fingered the papers on his table nervously.
“The abstract, as I was saying, consisted of a good many pages. And there was a certain page forty-two, where a will was set forth, in due form, when you got the document from the abstract office; but when your friend Van Cleve made his report on it for your rural syndicate that particular page was missing, and another, bearing the same page number, but with certain points of the Margaret Merriam will omitted, was substituted. That is quite correct, isn’t it?”
“You may search me! If there’s anything crooked about that abstract it’s not on me, you can bet your life. But say, you’re getting insulting. Now, I’ll tell you something, Leighton, as long as you’ve come to me in this friendly spirit,—this old-college-friendly spirit. I’ve been all over this thing in my mind. I’m not the twittering little birdling you think I am, to fix up a fake abstract and work it off on a lot of reubs. I didn’t order that abstract made; I didn’t have a damned thing to do with it. You seem to think that because there’s a beneficiary of the fifteenth amendment in the cordwood, I must be there somewhere, dressed up like a minstrel first part; but you’re a dead loser. I’m prepared to prove that that abstract of title was ordered by your Uncle Ezra Dameron, and that he gave it to me with his own hands. I guess you’ll have to admit that my reputation in this community is about as good as your Uncle Ezra’s. Now, it wounds my pride to have you talking to me as though I were the traditional villain of our modern melodrama, that you have cornered with a merry ‘Ha, ha! base churl, at last I have tracked thee to thy lair!’ No, darling, you can’t catch me on fly paper—not while my wits are in good working order. If you can see how to save Miss Dameron’s money without getting her dear old papa into the mulligatawney all well and good; but if you’re trying to bring me within the long, lean arm of the penal code you’ll have to get better. It’s your Uncle Ezra that you’re looking for.”
“We’re going to protect the stock-holders of your company whose money has gone into the Roger Merriam lots,” continued Leighton. “I honestly think I could set aside the sale; but we’ll be generous and straighten the title for you.”
“I rather guess you will, or Uncle Ezra wears the stripes.”
“I don’t think I’d say much about the stripes, with that abstract in Harry Copeland’s possession. You know Copeland is rather a persistent fellow, and one of his rural friends is in your company.”
“The devil he is!” But Balcomb batted his eyes uneasily.
“Now give me that option; it isn’t any good, anyhow; but I’ll feel more comfortable to have it out of your hands.”