CAREFUL observer would have noted that neither of the two men, as they entered, was quite at his ease. Harold Lismore, big, ruddy, fair, was painfully solemn-looking; while Daniel Stormont, slight, dapper, dark, followed, smiling with what seemed unnecessary geniality.
These two men were middle-aged: Lismore was fifty, and in a clear light looked every year of it; Stormont was five years younger, and passed for forty at the most.
“Hot, isn't it?' the latter remarked with a nod of greeting, and appeared to search for a suitable seat.
Lismore thought he did better than his companion when he advanced to the writing-table, from which Mr. Cran had not risen, saying:
“Sorry you didn't feel equal to town to-day. I trust—”
“Thanks, Please be seated—but first kindly turn the key in the door and draw the curtain across it..... Mr. Stormont, I regret having to ask you not to smoke your cigarette in this room. I am not well.”
“Beg pardon, I'm sure. Must be getting absent-minded,” said Stormont, hastily pocketing his gold case.
There was a silence, not long but impressive. Then, without lifting his eyes from some papers on the table, Rufus Cran began to speak.
“What I have to say is better said here than in my office—which, by the way I shall never enter again. But of that more presently.” A gesture requesting silence. “Pray allow me to proceed. In the first place, I have news of my nephew.” He paused, his head still bowed, and one would have fancied he was listening. Perhaps he did hear the sharply drawn breath of Harold Lismore. Daniel Stormont altered his attitude very slightly and soundlessly.
“My nephew,” he continued, “has sent me fifteen hundred dollars—nothing more. I am still in the dark as to his whereabouts and his occupation, but I have reason to believe that he is abroad, though the money was mailed in New York..... Well, gentlemen, what do you think about it?”
“It must have been a blow, Mr. Cran,” said Stormont readily. “I confess I have always suspected you of indulging secret—and very natural—hopes of his clearing himself; but now, unhappily, he has condemned himself.”
“Condemned himself,” echoed Lismore in a mere whisper.
TORMONT shot him a warning glance while he added gravely: “At the same time, may we not also say that he has—to some extent, at least—redeemed himself?”
“Yes, yes!” said Lismore eagerly. “Redeemed himself—that's it!”
“It struck me as very odd,” Rufus Cran remarked as if to himself, “that he should have sent me fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Odd, Mr. Cran?” said Stormont softly. “I should call it—”
“When he does not owe me one penny!”
An inarticulate sound—it might have been a groan—came from Lismore.
“Come, come, Mr. Cran,” Stormont interposed quickly, “you are forgetting. Lismore and I would be the last to remind you of that unfortunate event of two years ago—” He stopped short.
Rufus Cran had at last raised his eyes, and even in that doubtful light there was something deadly in their gaze. Yet his voice was cold and level.
“Stormont, Lismore, you know as well as I do—and you-knew from the beginning, and left me in ignorance—that Douglas Grant never touched, unlawfully, a penny of mine!”
“My God!” muttered Lismore, looking ready to collapse.
But Stormont, though white, kept his wits and said with a fair semblance of haughtiness:
“Really, my dear sir, I must beg of you to weigh your words! You are flying in the face of facts. Permit me to ask you two questions: first, why did your nephew disappear; second, why has he sent you the fifteen hundred?”
“You have the better of me, and I may never know how to answer those questions. Yet sometimes I imagine I have guessed.” Rufus Cran looked hard at Lismore.
“No, no!” cried the big man, writhing. His colleague snarled at him.
“Silence!” commanded Rufus Cran. “I have been making discoveries of late—strange but bitterly true discoveries, and the time has come to make an end. I accuse you both—”
Stormont sprang to his feet. “Be careful, Mr. Cran; I warn you to be careful! You love your business, and you know you cannot carry it on—”
“My business comes to an end at noon to-morrow! At that hour my lawyers will take charge, preparatory to winding up. They will pay you and Mr. Lismore the agreed three months' salaries.”
“But this is insufferable! We have served you for twenty years!”
“Yes,—but be seated, Mr. Stormont,—you have both served me for twenty years, and for many of those years I have regarded you as my right and left hands, and trusted you as such. Also I have treated you, I think, generously.”