As for Farson, I always counted a good deal on that crusty bit of rock, and he had never failed me yet. One thing after another had come up in the last four years, and he and his friends had backed me solidly. We were pretty deep in other enterprises than this packing business—railroads and land in that Southwest where I had set my eyes. While the scandal was the worst we never heard a word from Farson, and I was congratulating myself that he had overlooked the matter, when one morning I received a despatch: "Meet me Union Station twelve to-morrow. Farson." That was all.
When he got out of the sleeper that noon I missed his usual warm smile. He refused my invitation to lunch at the City Club, and led the way into the fly-specked, smelly restaurant at the station. We ate our miserable meal, and he said little while I talked to him about our affairs. It was like talking to a blank wall: he listened but said nothing. After a while he interrupted me in a kind of thin whisper, as if his mind had been absent all the time:—
"What about this Judge Garretson? It isn't true?"
"You mean what the papers say?"
The old gentleman didn't like newspapers. But he waived that aside with a frown.
"The facts!" he whispered across the table. "I should not have mentioned it had it not been for a conversation which I had the other day in New York with Judge Sloan, of the Chicago bar. He tells me that it is generally believed to be true that this Garretson was bribed, and that my old friend Jeff Slocum was mixed up in it. He says that Slocum has lost his reputation among the best men of the profession on account of his connection with this scandal. What are the facts?"
"This is hardly the place to go into all that," I replied somewhat tartly.
"I don't know but that the place is good enough," the banker observed dryly, "provided you have the right things to say." But he took the frost out of his severe tone by one of his most genial smiles, and added more gently:—
"Perhaps you young men don't realize how serious it is to have such rumors get around about your reputation. Why, my boy, it puts you in another class! You are no longer gentlemen, who can be trusted with honest people's money and confidence."
Farson would be a hard man to bring to my point of view! I said by way of allegory:—