The only really good thing that Dudley had been guilty of was his admission of Thornton’s cleverness.
Dudley and the manager of the elevators, having unwittingly put Vance Thornton in possession of more information even than he had expected to pick up in that western river town, walked back the way they had come and parted at the corner of the street, the dapper young man returning to his hotel.
“Well,” murmured Vance, as he emerged from his place of concealment, “if this hasn’t been the greatest piece of luck I’ve ever heard tell of, I don’t know what luck is. So there’s actually five million bushels of corn in these elevators, while they are officially reported as empty? I’m much obliged to you, Mr. Taggart, for the information,” and he looked after the retreating figures of the manager and his companion. “So that was a put-up job on me at Bagley’s chop-house, eh? And I never dreamed of it. At last I am on to you, Mr. Guy Dudley, and I think you’ve done all the damage you’re likely to do to Mr. Whitemore. And our respectable bookkeeper, Mr. Edgar Vyce, is a snake in the grass. I’ll have to lose no time in putting Mr. Whitemore next to all these important facts. When he learns the real state of affairs I guess Mr. Vyce will have to join the opposition in person as well as in spirit. I never did like him much, and now I certainly despise him. A sneak and a traitor ought always to be handled without gloves.”
By this time the road was clear for Vance to retire without attracting special attention to himself, and half an hour later he was seated at a table in the cottage writing a letter to his employer.
That afternoon he left Elevatorville by a river boat that carried him a few miles up the Mississippi to another town that boasted of a pair of dismantled elevators.
He had no difficulty in personally examining these buildings, and found that the newspaper report as to their condition was strictly true.
Vance added a postscript to his letter, setting forth the facts as he had found them, and then forwarded it by registered mail, as usual.
“I suppose Guy Dudley is watching for the train to deposit me in Elevatorville this evening,” he grinned as he sat on the hotel veranda after supper. “Gee! It was a lucky thought of mine not to go to the hotel last night. Had I done so my name would probably have been mud, so far as finding out what I came for, and then I should never have found out those other little matters. It’s better to be born lucky than rich.”
Next morning Vance left for a railway junction town in Missouri, the last point he had on his list.
It is unnecessary to go into the particulars of his business at this place.