“So you have got back?” he said with a pleasant smile.
“I thought Tip could be relied upon. I prefer you won’t cherish any hard feelings on account of the events of the morning.”
“Have you still got the papers, Mr. Standish?” asked Gerald abruptly.
“Then I suppose you have given them to Mr. Wentworth?”
“Yes; I would much rather have given them back to you, but I judged that you had not money enough to purchase them.”
“Mr. Standish,” said Gerald composedly, “I wouldn’t give five dollars to have the papers back.”
“But,” stammered Standish, “you said Mr. Wentworth offered you a thousand dollars for them.”
“For the originals, yes. _Those I delivered to you were copies._”
Standish seemed transfixed with amazement.
“But the originals? Where are they?” he asked.
“Where neither you nor Mr. Wentworth can get hold of them.”
When Standish had recovered from his astonishment he burst into a hearty laugh.
“The old man’s been fooled,” he said. “Serves him right for being so mean.”
IT was not until Bradley Wentworth was on board the train that was to bear him to Chicago that he drew out the letters which he had secured through the agency of Standish and examined them.
He almost leaped from his seat in anger and disappointment.
“They are fraudulent, and not worth the paper they are written on,” he at once decided. “And I have actually given that scoundrel three hundred and fifty dollars for them. Why didn’t I take the precaution to examine them before handing over the money?”
He examined them again. They might be fraudulent, for the handwriting was not his, but they were word for word similar to the genuine letters which he had written many years since to Warren Lane. The question arose, Who had copied them? Was it Standish? He dismissed this supposition as very improbable, and adopted the theory that the genuine letters were not in existence—that Warren Lane had given these to his son as a record of what had passed between himself and Wentworth.
“In that case,” he reflected with satisfaction, “the boy has no hold upon me. I have only to deny all knowledge of the letters and stigmatize them as part of a conspiracy to extort money from me on false charges. It is worth three hundred and fifty dollars to find this out.”