“Mr. Carey, sir,” he began, with something in his tone which made Glen, passing through to the spinning room, stop and stare, “you think it’s queer I can’t take on over Birdsall. Well, I’m not shedding any tears over a thief.”
“Luke!” It was Glen who cried out.
Mr. ’Gene Carey’s genial old face flushed an angry cardinal. “Now, look here, Manders, I won’t stand for that! I won’t listen to a word against old Ben, not even from you. You’re jealous of him for some reason, Lord knows why, for he was a good friend to you while he was here, and always glad to see you advance! I think it’s pretty small business, Luke, when a man’s dead and gone, to——”
The mountaineer colored likewise but he held his head high, and there was patience in his voice, and regret. “I’m mighty sorry, Mr. Carey. I wish I could keep still about it all. I’d put the flag at half mast and hang crape over the whole place, yes, and cry like a nigger at a gospel meeting, if I could keep you fooled. But I couldn’t, Mr. Carey. You’d have to know sometime, sir. You’d have to know.”
It was very still in the stuffy little office of the Altonia, and the old man and the two girls who were looking at him and listening to him seemed to hold their breath. Nancy was the least moved of the three, but her tender and lyrical gaze grew softer, and Glen Darrow paled swiftly, while the senior partner’s dark and dangerous flush increased until his face was mottled and congested looking.
“What do you mean?” he managed thickly. “What are you trying to tell me, Luke Manders, about poor old Ben Birdsall, lying in his grave out there in California?”
The superintendent cleared his throat. There was nothing hard about him now. He hesitated, and showed in look and tone and tempo the most unmistakable distaste for his unlovely task.
“I wish I didn’t have to try to tell you, sir. I wish to God I didn’t! You won’t believe me, at first. You won’t want to believe me. But I can show you the books, and I can show you the files.”
After a hectic quarter of an hour, Mr. ’Gene Carey got hold of himself, and was able to listen intelligently, and to take in and assimilate the heavy tidings Luke Manders had brought him. Old Ben Birdsall, the young superintendent told him, as briefly and coolly as possible, had been cheating him for years, pilfering from the Altonia, altering the books, destroying incriminating letters, covering up his perfidy with a depth of guile amazing in a man of his mentality—or of what they had innocently believed to be his mentality.
The old gentleman took it very hard. The two girls, palely listening, were afraid he would swoon in the violence of his grief and indignation, and Glen, witnessing the slow death of his faith in his old retainer, found her heart softening toward him.