"He promised to let them know."
"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts—the perfectly needless and motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned—would be a strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?"
Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get home without her; and Suzette must come, too.
IX.
The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the troubled dream he had waked from.
"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have you been?" he demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood.
A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. "I've been at home—at Hatboro'."
"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could only have it for a scoop—"
Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and given the whole thing away, I can't ask anything for my services."