“I'll make a case, if there's a hair to hang on!”
But his first act in the making of this case was to light a disreputable cob pipe which was reserved for times of great mental activity; then he locked his door, and committed the facts Virginia had given him to writing, but the form of this writing was a letter to Clara Norton. He finished his letter by asking her to preserve the formidable missive he had produced; for he said, “I shall never be able to state what I see quite so clearly to anyone else. I shall write you from Belmont County the first thing. I know you will hope with me that my theorizing is not all moonshine, and that I'll come on the substance of fraud, for this will mean so much to us both;” and then Mr. Wade blew a cloud of smoke with smiling tender lips, and reduced to a single paragraph the wealth of sentiment he suddenly felt stirring within his soul.
He left town that night, and without seeing Stephen; for he feared that he might let slip something of their discovery. Of one thing he felt quite certain; Stephen, if it came to taking sides, would cast his fortunes with Benson. He could not think that he would be so blind to his own ultimate interests as to do otherwise.
He was absent from Benson just two days. The morning of the third he returned, and though the hour was early, he went at once to Virginia.
“Well?” she asked, after they had shaken hands. He was smiling, and from that smile she argued ill for Benson.
“It looks ugly, Mrs. Landray. I knew you'd want to know what I'd found the minute I got back, so I came here from the train, just stopping to leave my satchel at the office. Yes”—he was slowly drawing off his gloves now—“yes, it looks bad for Benson. I wouldn't care to stand where he stands. I accomplished more than I set out to. Stark must have been the merest dummy in the transaction; the real purchaser never saw him. As in your own case, he had his dealings entirely with Mr. Benson.”
“I should never have thought he could have been so false!” cried Virginia.
“You can never tell until a man's tempted,” said Wade placidly.
“But the land,” said Virginia. “The number of acres?”
“The memorandum was correct in every particular; no matter what you thought at the time, you actually transferred two thousand acres to Stark. But,” he took a turn about the room, “the best is yet to come! I found Southerland, the man who owns the land. I went on to Wheeling to see him, and he was perfectly willing to talk. He tells me he paid—fifty thousand dollars for the land! The various transfers touching the final disposition of the property all fall within the space of less than two weeks, and according to Southerland's story, Benson must have had his offer before he presented the fake offer from Stark; indeed, he was on there, and in Southerland's company visited the land; this grew out of Southerland's having been here—I suppose you never knew that?”