"I took his cheque on the Trust National Bank."
"Did you cash it? Did you cash it?" cried the young man. "And if you did, where is the money?"
"Druce asked me as a favour not to present the cheque until to-morrow."
The young man made a gesture of despair.
"The Trust National went to smash to-day at two. We are paupers, father; we haven't a cent left out of the wreck. That cheque business is so evidently a fraud that—but what's the use of talking. Old Druce has the money, and he can buy all the law he wants in New York. God! I'd like to have a seven seconds' interview with him with a loaded seven-shooter in my hand! We'd see how much the law would do for him then."
General Sneed despondently shook his head.
"It's no use, John," he said. "We're in the same business ourselves, only this time we got the hot end of the poker. But he played it low down on me, pretending to be friendly and all that." The two men did not speak again until the carriage drew up at the brown stone mansion, which earlier in the day Sneed would have called his own. Sixteen reporters were waiting for them, but the old man succeeded in escaping to his room, leaving John to battle with the newspaper men.
Next morning the papers were full of the news of the panic. They said that old Druce had gone in his yacht for a trip up the New England coast. They deduced from this fact, that, after all, Druce might not have had a hand in the disaster; everything was always blamed on Druce. Still it was admitted that, whoever suffered, the Druce stocks were all right. They were quite unanimously frank in saying that the Sneeds were wiped out, whatever that might mean. The General had refused himself to all the reporters, while young Sneed seemed to be able to do nothing but swear.
Shortly before noon General Sneed, who had not left the house, received a letter brought by a messenger.
He feverishly tore it open, for he recognised on the envelope the well- known scrawl of the great speculator.