"Yes, according to your idea; but I tell you such a system is impossible in any respectable business."
"Do you consider the General Chemical Company a respectable concern?"
"I have always supposed so; but whether respectable or not, the errors, to use a mild term, you speak of are simply impossible in an establishment where there are clerks employed, and checks kept, and experienced book-keepers always engaged on the accounts."
Having made which observation, in a much more decided manner than it was his custom usually to employ, Mr. Mortomley walked out of the room, leaving his wife and Rupert alone together.
Rupert, looking after him, shrugged his shoulders, and thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets and planting one shoulder well up against the window shutter, remarked to Dolly,
"He won't believe those people have been cheating him right and left, and I don't know that any good purpose would be served if I could make him believe it. Because, owing to my stupidity, we never can prove the fact. If you and Lenore are beggared," he added, with a poor attempt at mirth, "I give you full leave to blame me for the whole of it."
"Do not be absurd," answered Mrs. Mortomley uneasily. "Archie is quite right, of course. People could not cheat, and if they could they would not be so wicked."
Rupert laughed outright. "Would they not, Mrs. Mortomley? Much you know of the world and its ways—I say and shall say to the end of my life, that the General Chemical Company has, by a system of splendid book-keeping, been robbing us of I should be afraid to say how much; and I say further, no system of book-keeping we could devise would be of the slightest use in preventing it. But it might have been stopped ere this by our stoppage. Nothing else will do it now. Remember what I say to you, Dolly; and they are not my words alone—they are the words of men who know far more about business and City matters than I ever want to do. If Archie is to do any good for himself and you and Lenore" (Rupert kept his own name and that of his sister discreetly out of sight) "he must stop now. If he speaks to you about it, don't dissuade him, Dolly; for God's sake don't try to induce him to put off the evil day any longer."
Vehemence of manner or expression was unusual at Homewood, and, for a moment, Rupert's words and looks startled Mrs. Mortomley. After that moment she answered,
"I shall not dissuade or persuade him, for I know nothing really about the matter."