Chapter XI.LuckPromptly at six that evening the telephone in Storm’s apartment shrilled, and it had scarcely ceased vibrating when he sprang to it and caught up the receiver.He uttered a quick monosyllabic assent to some evident query, listened intently for a minute and then threw back his head in a smile of elation. The next instant he was speaking calmly, quietly.“Too small a proposition for him to tackle, eh?” he observed. “Well, I’m not a magnate, Monsieur du Chainat, but I would like to talk it over with you. How about dining with me in an hour at the Rochefoucauld where we met last night? . . . . Bring along your papers, and we can come back here later and go into the details . . . . Very good, at seven.”His luck was holding! Old Whitmarsh had turned the loan down as too petty a transaction to interest him. The chance was his now, make or break! But pshaw! he couldn’t lose; not if Du Chainat’s securities were all right. Past failures had made him skeptical, but now fortune had changed. A hundred and twenty thousand!He whistled exultantly as he changed from one somber suit of mourning to another, and only paused when a casual glance in the mirror brought home to him with a shock the incongruity between his expression and his attire. He threw back his shoulders defiantly.“The past is dead!” he muttered. “Three months, and I shall be free to forget!”Monsieur du Chainat met him in the hotel lobby and greeted him with undiminished enthusiasm.“I am delighted, Monsieur, that you find yourself interested,” he remarked, after their order had been given. “Since I telephoned to you an hour ago I have received yet another offer to take up the loan, this from an associate of Monsieur Whitmarsh, whom he must have consulted; a Monsieur Nicholas Langhorne. You perhaps have heard of him?”Storm nodded.“I know him,” he said briefly, forbearing to add that the gentleman in question was the president of the Trust Company which he ornamented with his presence. To get ahead of old Langhorne! That would be gratification enough were the profits cut to a minimum.“I have replied to him that the affair is already under consideration”—Monsieur du Chainat poised a fragment of hors d’oeuvre gracefully upon his fork,—“but should you not, after examining the documents I have brought, desire to close, Monsieur, I will see him to-morrow.”“ ‘To-morrow!’ ” Storm echoed in dismay. “I should like a little longer time than that in which to decide. It may take me some days to convert my capital into cash, and there are other contingencies——”“But Monsieur forgets that to me time is of paramount importance.” The Frenchman’s face had clouded. “It is for that we pay one hundred per cent interest in three months! When I have acquired the loan I do not even wait for the ship which takes me back; I cable to mybeau-pèrethe money, that the work may start without an hour’s delay. You comprehend, Monsieur, how urgent is our need by the extent of our sacrifice. I shall have an inheritance from my uncle soon, and I shall aid Père Peronneau in paying off the government loan for which he is responsible when he repays it with the debt we incur here. There is the sentiment as well as the business, as I told you last night, Monsieur. If you could but see thebeau-père——”He drew a simple but graphic word picture of the old manufacturer, but his listener was distrait. Could he get the fifty thousand from Foulkes at such short order, to say nothing of arranging the mortgage on the Greenlea house? Monsieur du Chainat’s haste seemed plausible enough, and then there was Langhorne only too ready to snap up the prize!By heavens, if the Frenchman’s security looked good to him, he would raise the money, come what might!And the security did look more than good when later they repaired to his rooms, and Monsieur du Chainat produced his sheaf of multitudinous documents. There were the unassailable correspondence on the letter heads of the consulate, Henri Peronneau’s authorization of his son-in-law, Maurice Pierre du Chainat as his agent, duly signed and attested to by the notary of Lille, a deed formally making over to the lender of three hundred thousand francs—the space for whose name was left significantly blank—the government loan of six hundred thousand in its entirety, and lastly a formidable-appearing document of the French government itself announcing the grant of the loan.“For further evidence of our good faith,”—Monsieur du Chainat drew a second packet of papers from his pocket,—“I have here a deed to the factory itself which can be held as security. As you can see from this photograph, Monsieur, the factory is a mere shell now, but a stout and solid shell, and the land upon which it stands is worth more than the sum we require. Our government has not asked this security of us but accepted instead some undeveloped coal properties to the south. Here are the documents attesting to that and also those which prove the factory to be the property of Monsieur Peronneau, free of lien or mortgage.”They talked until far into the night, and when the Frenchman at length took his departure he bore with him Storm’s agreement to advance the loan.The morning brought no breath of misgiving, save anxiety lest he should fail in his efforts to secure the cash in the space of twenty-four hours specified by Du Chainat. The Trust Company would assume the mortgage on the Greenlea house, he knew, and waive technicalities to give him the ten thousand at once, but there remained Foulkes to be managed, and if the old rascal knew that haste was imperative to the transaction he would balk it in sheer perversity.On one point Storm was determined; he would not take Foulkes into his confidence, nor anyone.He had a stormy session with the old attorney, adjourned at noon only to be renewed with more wordy violence an hour later; but in the end Storm emerged triumphant, with a certified check for fifty thousand dollars and Foulkes’ dismal prophecies ringing in his ears. The mortgage on the house was, as he had anticipated, a simple matter to arrange, and on the following morning he handed to Monsieur du Chainat the sixty thousand dollars which were to return to him twofold.The momentous transaction concluded, he repaired to his desk at the Trust Company, gloating over the unconscious bald head of Nicholas Langhorne. He had put one over on him, beaten that conservative financier by a matter of hours! Du Chainat had shown him Langhorne’s letter, and he read between the lines the latter’s eagerness to grasp the coveted opportunity which he had himself placed within Storm’s reach by taking up the mortgage. How he would writhe if he knew who had forestalled him, just as he and the rest would writhe if they realized the enormity of that other affair which he had put over on all the world!They would never learn the truth about Leila’s death; that was buried forever. But he would give much to tell Langhorne how he had outwitted him, and watch the old fox’s face! Perhaps he would tell him some day, the day on which his six hundred thousand francs came and he resigned from the Trust Company!George Holworthy found him a strange companion for the rest of the week. The faithful friend could not understand his moods, for Storm, never easily comprehended by the other’s slow-moving brain, seemed all at once to develop a complexity which utterly baffled him.Storm himself found it difficult to preserve a calm and resigned demeanor to mask his thoughts which seethed with plans for the future. When haunting memories came unbidden, he thrust them fiercely aside, smothered them beneath the exultation of having escaped the lax hands of justice.“Upon my soul, Norman, I don’t know what to make of you!” George complained one evening as they strolled up the Drive. “If you were a woman, I’d swear you were hysterical!”Storm halted, glad of the semi-obscurity of the trees which tempered the searching street lights.“You’re crazy!” he retorted.“No, I’m not,” insisted George in serious refutation. “You’re down in the dumps one minute and all excited the next. You haven’t been speculating again?”“Good Lord, no!” Storm breathed more freely. He must be careful! If old George thought his manner odd, how would it impress others? “I’m through with all that sort of thing.”“Well, I didn’t know,” the other said lamely. “There’s a streak of recklessness in you, and when you get in one of those don’t-give-a-hang moods of yours you are apt to pull off some fool stunt——”“My dear George!” Storm’s tone was pained. “I’ve been through enough, God knows, in the last few weeks to sober me down——”“But it hasn’t!” George persevered. “You seem hardened, defiant, just in the frame of mind to do something desperate! I tell you I’ve been worried about you these days.”Storm shrugged ironically.“Sorry I can’t set your mind at rest,” he replied. “I don’t seem to be taking what’s come to me according to your notions. First, you are disappointed because I don’t rant around and tear my hair, and now you accuse me of hysteria!”“That’s it; that’s what I don’t like!” exclaimed George, “That callousness; it isn’t natural, it isn’t you! You’re putting it on because your trouble has made you defiant, bitter. I know you, Norman, you can’t fool me; I’m only trying to help you, to keep you from doing anything you will have cause to regret.”“Don’t you worry,” Storm reassured him, the while his face twitched with mirth. George knew him, did he? He couldn’t fool him? He checked an impulse to laugh aloud and added quietly: “I’m not in such a desperate mood as you imagine, old man; I can’t seem to settle down to the new order of things just yet, that’s the trouble, but I’ve no intention of going to the dogs, financially or any other way. I’ll get a grip on myself soon.”But as the days passed Storm did not find it so easy to control himself. He had gained complete ascendancy over the faint twinges of conscience which assailed him now with less and less frequency, but with the assurance of absolute safety came a dangerous, almost insane tendency to test that safety. Although he had no desire to revisit the scene of Leila’s death, and shrank from any reference to her, the subject of crime in general began to exert an inordinate fascination for him, and with it his pride in his own achievement increased.He eagerly awaited the news of Du Chainat’s arrival in France, and his occasional glimpses of President Langhorne filled him with renewed complacency. He would most assuredly tell him about getting in ahead on that little deal one of these days!The temptation became overwhelming one morning after a brief interview with his august superior during which the latter had called him to account, courteously but firmly, for a trifling dereliction. The sting rankled, and at the door he turned, the impulse to retaliate mastering him.“Oh, Mr. Langhorne, you’ve heard of a man named Du Chainat, I believe?”The president looked up in surprise at his subordinate’s presumption.“Du Chainat? Can’t say I have,” he responded shortly.Storm smiled and raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity.“The agent in that little deal Whitmarsh was considering only last week; a loan for the reconstruction of a French factory——”“I am not in Mr. Whitmarsh’s confidence, Mr. Storm.” President Langhorne darted a keen glance at the other and added: “May I ask why you assume that I know anything of this particular affair?”“I understood that you were interested in it.” Storm paused expectantly, but the president shook his head.“Never heard of it,” he asseverated. “You’ve been misinformed, Mr. Storm. The man you mention is absolutely unknown to me.”He turned pointedly to his desk and Storm withdrew, still smiling covertly. The old fox wouldn’t admit that he had tried to get in on the game, of course, now that someone else had beaten him to it. Wait until he learned who that someone was! The joke was so good that it would keep a little longer, especially since Storm had given him something to puzzle over. He would have been a fool to give it away now; old Langhorne could make it infernally unpleasant for him around the office if he chose.The three months stretched interminably before him, and George with dog-like fidelity seemed determined to stick close and make it as irksome as he could. God, if only he were free from them all!Storm had left his own car locked in the garage at Greenlea, but on an impulse he hired another when his work was finished for the afternoon and had himself driven out to a shore resort for dinner. The season had not yet opened, and the place was semi-deserted, yet the isolation fitted in with his mood. George would in all probability put in an appearance at the apartment that evening, and to avoid him Storm lingered deliberately over his meal and ordered the chauffeur to take the longest way home.He would not admit even to himself that the sudden aversion to the companionship of the man he had for so long regarded with amused, half-condescending tolerance had sprung from the fact that George unconsciously brought to his mind the aspects of his crime which he was most determined to put behind him. George was a constant reminder of the years which must be forgotten; his grief at the loss of the woman who had given him a valued friendship was a constant reproach.How easy it had been to blind him to the truth! How easy it had been to blind everybody! Why, a man with sufficient intelligence could pull off almost anything in this world and get away with it if he had only enough nerve and self-control!Storm was still smiling at the thought as he entered his apartment house long after ten o’clock and found George sitting patiently in the hall, his near-sighted eyes glued to a newspaper.“I waited for you,” the latter explained, happily oblivious to the coolness of the reception. “Knew you wouldn’t be late, and I wanted a little talk with you.”“Come on in,” Storm invited wearily, opening the door and switching on the lights. “I ran out of town for a breath of clean air.—The cigars are in the humidor; help yourself.”George settled himself comfortably in a huge leather chair and smoked in silence for a space, while Storm moved restlessly about the room.“I came,” remarked the visitor at length, “to ask you what you know about Millard’s nephew. He applied to us for a job, and the only thing open is a rather responsible position.”“Don’t know anything about him,” snapped his host. “He held some sort of minor clerical position in Washington during the war. Weak chest and the only-son-of-his-mother stuff kept him from active service. He’s a likable enough chap, plays good golf——”George shook his head.“Hardly material to the point,” he observed. “I want to know whether he’s dependable or not; conscientious and steady, not given up to these quick-rich ideas that get so many young fellows. I tell you we can’t be too careful nowadays——”Storm laughed shortly.“My dear George, I wouldn’t give you an opinion on any man’s honesty. Given the incentive and the opportunity, how do we know where anyone gets off?”“Oh, come, Norman!” George’s tone was scandalized. “That’s a pretty broad assertion. We’re not all potential criminals!”“No?” Storm paused to light a cigar. “Well, if we’re not you must admit that the opportunities lie around thick enough. The wonder of it is that there isn’t more crookedness going on!”“The example of what happens to the fellow who has tried it is a deterrent, I imagine,” George observed sententiously. “When he’s caught——”“And whenishe caught except through his own negligence and loss of nerve?” demanded Storm, the train of thought which had occupied his mind an hour before recurring to him. “Certainly it isn’t through the extraordinary ability of society at large to track him down. A man gives himself away; he is safe until he makes a mistake.”“Then every crook in the world must be a bungler, for they’re all caught, sooner or later,” George retorted. “The cleverest ones over-reach themselves in time.—Take this fellow Jan Martens, or whatever his real name is. To be sure, he hasn’t been caught yet, but his game is up; he tried it once too often.”“Martens?” Storm repeated absently, his mind fixed upon his own argument.“Haven’t you looked at the evening papers?” asked George. “He’s been working an old con. game with a new twist and getting the suckers for anything from five to fifty thousand. Worked Boston and Philadelphia before he came here and got away with a tremendous haul. They only got the goods on him to-day, but he had skipped. It was a clever stunt, too; he played upon a combination of sympathy and cupidity in his victims that only failed when he tackled a wise one. His line was getting loans on forged securities for rebuilding demolished property in France and Belgium——”“What?”Storm was not conscious that he had spoken, that he had turned and was staring at his visitor with wild eyes. He only knew that George’s solid, compact figure was wavering oddly, and his voice seemed to come from far away.“He rather upsets your theory, Norman,” George continued complacently, ignorant of the effect of his disclosure. “He wasn’t giving himself away, by a long shot, and his paraphernalia was certainly elaborate and imposing enough in all conscience! In Boston he posed as Jan Martens, a Belgian looking for a loan to rebuild the family chateau and giving forged Congo properties as security. It worked so well that when he came here he tried to improve on it, and over-reached himself, as I contended a few minutes ago.“A lot of foreigners are over here now trying to negotiate perfectly legitimate loans on the same order, but with bona fide securities to offer, and he fell in with one of them who was vouched for at the French consulate here, a citizen of Lille named Du Chainat.”Storm drew a long breath.“But this—Du Chainat is all right, you say?” he stammered. “His proposition was legitimate?”“Absolutely. He must have taken this Martens into his confidence, shown him his papers and left them where the crook could get at them, for Martens forged a duplicate set,—they found the stacks of counterfeit government deeds and grants, both Belgian and French, in his room to-day together with official letter-heads from the consulates,—and then when Du Chainat returned to France he impersonated him. Du Chainat had put through his loan all right with Whitmarsh.”“When——” Storm moistened his dry lips. “When did this Du Chainat leave America?”“Three weeks ago, according to the paper. The impostor was only exposed through a woman, too, a rich widow whom he approached yesterday with his proposition; but he didn’t take into consideration the fact that she had lived abroad. As it happened, she knew the Du Chainat family in Lille, but by the time she made up her mind to risk notoriety and inform the police of the attempted swindle the bird had flown.”He paused, but Storm had heard only the first three words of his utterance. “Three weeks ago”! And only a week had passed since he handed to the bogus Du Chainat every cent he had in the world! It couldn’t be true! There must be some hideous mistake!“Here, it’s all in the paper. I was reading about it while I waited for you. Want to see it?”George picked up the newspaper from the table where he had dropped it on entering, and Storm seized it, hoping blindly, doggedly against all hope. His luck could not have deserted him! Fate would not play him such a ghastly trick now!But the headlines stared at him in uncompromising type, and the article itself left no room for doubt. He had been despoiled of his only means of freedom! Penniless, he was chained forever to the environs of the past, to the friends who had been Leila’s, the life of which she had been a part. The curse was upon him, and he might not even flee from the memories which dogged him! He was bound hand and foot, held fast!
Promptly at six that evening the telephone in Storm’s apartment shrilled, and it had scarcely ceased vibrating when he sprang to it and caught up the receiver.
He uttered a quick monosyllabic assent to some evident query, listened intently for a minute and then threw back his head in a smile of elation. The next instant he was speaking calmly, quietly.
“Too small a proposition for him to tackle, eh?” he observed. “Well, I’m not a magnate, Monsieur du Chainat, but I would like to talk it over with you. How about dining with me in an hour at the Rochefoucauld where we met last night? . . . . Bring along your papers, and we can come back here later and go into the details . . . . Very good, at seven.”
His luck was holding! Old Whitmarsh had turned the loan down as too petty a transaction to interest him. The chance was his now, make or break! But pshaw! he couldn’t lose; not if Du Chainat’s securities were all right. Past failures had made him skeptical, but now fortune had changed. A hundred and twenty thousand!
He whistled exultantly as he changed from one somber suit of mourning to another, and only paused when a casual glance in the mirror brought home to him with a shock the incongruity between his expression and his attire. He threw back his shoulders defiantly.
“The past is dead!” he muttered. “Three months, and I shall be free to forget!”
Monsieur du Chainat met him in the hotel lobby and greeted him with undiminished enthusiasm.
“I am delighted, Monsieur, that you find yourself interested,” he remarked, after their order had been given. “Since I telephoned to you an hour ago I have received yet another offer to take up the loan, this from an associate of Monsieur Whitmarsh, whom he must have consulted; a Monsieur Nicholas Langhorne. You perhaps have heard of him?”
Storm nodded.
“I know him,” he said briefly, forbearing to add that the gentleman in question was the president of the Trust Company which he ornamented with his presence. To get ahead of old Langhorne! That would be gratification enough were the profits cut to a minimum.
“I have replied to him that the affair is already under consideration”—Monsieur du Chainat poised a fragment of hors d’oeuvre gracefully upon his fork,—“but should you not, after examining the documents I have brought, desire to close, Monsieur, I will see him to-morrow.”
“ ‘To-morrow!’ ” Storm echoed in dismay. “I should like a little longer time than that in which to decide. It may take me some days to convert my capital into cash, and there are other contingencies——”
“But Monsieur forgets that to me time is of paramount importance.” The Frenchman’s face had clouded. “It is for that we pay one hundred per cent interest in three months! When I have acquired the loan I do not even wait for the ship which takes me back; I cable to mybeau-pèrethe money, that the work may start without an hour’s delay. You comprehend, Monsieur, how urgent is our need by the extent of our sacrifice. I shall have an inheritance from my uncle soon, and I shall aid Père Peronneau in paying off the government loan for which he is responsible when he repays it with the debt we incur here. There is the sentiment as well as the business, as I told you last night, Monsieur. If you could but see thebeau-père——”
He drew a simple but graphic word picture of the old manufacturer, but his listener was distrait. Could he get the fifty thousand from Foulkes at such short order, to say nothing of arranging the mortgage on the Greenlea house? Monsieur du Chainat’s haste seemed plausible enough, and then there was Langhorne only too ready to snap up the prize!
By heavens, if the Frenchman’s security looked good to him, he would raise the money, come what might!
And the security did look more than good when later they repaired to his rooms, and Monsieur du Chainat produced his sheaf of multitudinous documents. There were the unassailable correspondence on the letter heads of the consulate, Henri Peronneau’s authorization of his son-in-law, Maurice Pierre du Chainat as his agent, duly signed and attested to by the notary of Lille, a deed formally making over to the lender of three hundred thousand francs—the space for whose name was left significantly blank—the government loan of six hundred thousand in its entirety, and lastly a formidable-appearing document of the French government itself announcing the grant of the loan.
“For further evidence of our good faith,”—Monsieur du Chainat drew a second packet of papers from his pocket,—“I have here a deed to the factory itself which can be held as security. As you can see from this photograph, Monsieur, the factory is a mere shell now, but a stout and solid shell, and the land upon which it stands is worth more than the sum we require. Our government has not asked this security of us but accepted instead some undeveloped coal properties to the south. Here are the documents attesting to that and also those which prove the factory to be the property of Monsieur Peronneau, free of lien or mortgage.”
They talked until far into the night, and when the Frenchman at length took his departure he bore with him Storm’s agreement to advance the loan.
The morning brought no breath of misgiving, save anxiety lest he should fail in his efforts to secure the cash in the space of twenty-four hours specified by Du Chainat. The Trust Company would assume the mortgage on the Greenlea house, he knew, and waive technicalities to give him the ten thousand at once, but there remained Foulkes to be managed, and if the old rascal knew that haste was imperative to the transaction he would balk it in sheer perversity.
On one point Storm was determined; he would not take Foulkes into his confidence, nor anyone.
He had a stormy session with the old attorney, adjourned at noon only to be renewed with more wordy violence an hour later; but in the end Storm emerged triumphant, with a certified check for fifty thousand dollars and Foulkes’ dismal prophecies ringing in his ears. The mortgage on the house was, as he had anticipated, a simple matter to arrange, and on the following morning he handed to Monsieur du Chainat the sixty thousand dollars which were to return to him twofold.
The momentous transaction concluded, he repaired to his desk at the Trust Company, gloating over the unconscious bald head of Nicholas Langhorne. He had put one over on him, beaten that conservative financier by a matter of hours! Du Chainat had shown him Langhorne’s letter, and he read between the lines the latter’s eagerness to grasp the coveted opportunity which he had himself placed within Storm’s reach by taking up the mortgage. How he would writhe if he knew who had forestalled him, just as he and the rest would writhe if they realized the enormity of that other affair which he had put over on all the world!
They would never learn the truth about Leila’s death; that was buried forever. But he would give much to tell Langhorne how he had outwitted him, and watch the old fox’s face! Perhaps he would tell him some day, the day on which his six hundred thousand francs came and he resigned from the Trust Company!
George Holworthy found him a strange companion for the rest of the week. The faithful friend could not understand his moods, for Storm, never easily comprehended by the other’s slow-moving brain, seemed all at once to develop a complexity which utterly baffled him.
Storm himself found it difficult to preserve a calm and resigned demeanor to mask his thoughts which seethed with plans for the future. When haunting memories came unbidden, he thrust them fiercely aside, smothered them beneath the exultation of having escaped the lax hands of justice.
“Upon my soul, Norman, I don’t know what to make of you!” George complained one evening as they strolled up the Drive. “If you were a woman, I’d swear you were hysterical!”
Storm halted, glad of the semi-obscurity of the trees which tempered the searching street lights.
“You’re crazy!” he retorted.
“No, I’m not,” insisted George in serious refutation. “You’re down in the dumps one minute and all excited the next. You haven’t been speculating again?”
“Good Lord, no!” Storm breathed more freely. He must be careful! If old George thought his manner odd, how would it impress others? “I’m through with all that sort of thing.”
“Well, I didn’t know,” the other said lamely. “There’s a streak of recklessness in you, and when you get in one of those don’t-give-a-hang moods of yours you are apt to pull off some fool stunt——”
“My dear George!” Storm’s tone was pained. “I’ve been through enough, God knows, in the last few weeks to sober me down——”
“But it hasn’t!” George persevered. “You seem hardened, defiant, just in the frame of mind to do something desperate! I tell you I’ve been worried about you these days.”
Storm shrugged ironically.
“Sorry I can’t set your mind at rest,” he replied. “I don’t seem to be taking what’s come to me according to your notions. First, you are disappointed because I don’t rant around and tear my hair, and now you accuse me of hysteria!”
“That’s it; that’s what I don’t like!” exclaimed George, “That callousness; it isn’t natural, it isn’t you! You’re putting it on because your trouble has made you defiant, bitter. I know you, Norman, you can’t fool me; I’m only trying to help you, to keep you from doing anything you will have cause to regret.”
“Don’t you worry,” Storm reassured him, the while his face twitched with mirth. George knew him, did he? He couldn’t fool him? He checked an impulse to laugh aloud and added quietly: “I’m not in such a desperate mood as you imagine, old man; I can’t seem to settle down to the new order of things just yet, that’s the trouble, but I’ve no intention of going to the dogs, financially or any other way. I’ll get a grip on myself soon.”
But as the days passed Storm did not find it so easy to control himself. He had gained complete ascendancy over the faint twinges of conscience which assailed him now with less and less frequency, but with the assurance of absolute safety came a dangerous, almost insane tendency to test that safety. Although he had no desire to revisit the scene of Leila’s death, and shrank from any reference to her, the subject of crime in general began to exert an inordinate fascination for him, and with it his pride in his own achievement increased.
He eagerly awaited the news of Du Chainat’s arrival in France, and his occasional glimpses of President Langhorne filled him with renewed complacency. He would most assuredly tell him about getting in ahead on that little deal one of these days!
The temptation became overwhelming one morning after a brief interview with his august superior during which the latter had called him to account, courteously but firmly, for a trifling dereliction. The sting rankled, and at the door he turned, the impulse to retaliate mastering him.
“Oh, Mr. Langhorne, you’ve heard of a man named Du Chainat, I believe?”
The president looked up in surprise at his subordinate’s presumption.
“Du Chainat? Can’t say I have,” he responded shortly.
Storm smiled and raised his eyebrows in polite incredulity.
“The agent in that little deal Whitmarsh was considering only last week; a loan for the reconstruction of a French factory——”
“I am not in Mr. Whitmarsh’s confidence, Mr. Storm.” President Langhorne darted a keen glance at the other and added: “May I ask why you assume that I know anything of this particular affair?”
“I understood that you were interested in it.” Storm paused expectantly, but the president shook his head.
“Never heard of it,” he asseverated. “You’ve been misinformed, Mr. Storm. The man you mention is absolutely unknown to me.”
He turned pointedly to his desk and Storm withdrew, still smiling covertly. The old fox wouldn’t admit that he had tried to get in on the game, of course, now that someone else had beaten him to it. Wait until he learned who that someone was! The joke was so good that it would keep a little longer, especially since Storm had given him something to puzzle over. He would have been a fool to give it away now; old Langhorne could make it infernally unpleasant for him around the office if he chose.
The three months stretched interminably before him, and George with dog-like fidelity seemed determined to stick close and make it as irksome as he could. God, if only he were free from them all!
Storm had left his own car locked in the garage at Greenlea, but on an impulse he hired another when his work was finished for the afternoon and had himself driven out to a shore resort for dinner. The season had not yet opened, and the place was semi-deserted, yet the isolation fitted in with his mood. George would in all probability put in an appearance at the apartment that evening, and to avoid him Storm lingered deliberately over his meal and ordered the chauffeur to take the longest way home.
He would not admit even to himself that the sudden aversion to the companionship of the man he had for so long regarded with amused, half-condescending tolerance had sprung from the fact that George unconsciously brought to his mind the aspects of his crime which he was most determined to put behind him. George was a constant reminder of the years which must be forgotten; his grief at the loss of the woman who had given him a valued friendship was a constant reproach.
How easy it had been to blind him to the truth! How easy it had been to blind everybody! Why, a man with sufficient intelligence could pull off almost anything in this world and get away with it if he had only enough nerve and self-control!
Storm was still smiling at the thought as he entered his apartment house long after ten o’clock and found George sitting patiently in the hall, his near-sighted eyes glued to a newspaper.
“I waited for you,” the latter explained, happily oblivious to the coolness of the reception. “Knew you wouldn’t be late, and I wanted a little talk with you.”
“Come on in,” Storm invited wearily, opening the door and switching on the lights. “I ran out of town for a breath of clean air.—The cigars are in the humidor; help yourself.”
George settled himself comfortably in a huge leather chair and smoked in silence for a space, while Storm moved restlessly about the room.
“I came,” remarked the visitor at length, “to ask you what you know about Millard’s nephew. He applied to us for a job, and the only thing open is a rather responsible position.”
“Don’t know anything about him,” snapped his host. “He held some sort of minor clerical position in Washington during the war. Weak chest and the only-son-of-his-mother stuff kept him from active service. He’s a likable enough chap, plays good golf——”
George shook his head.
“Hardly material to the point,” he observed. “I want to know whether he’s dependable or not; conscientious and steady, not given up to these quick-rich ideas that get so many young fellows. I tell you we can’t be too careful nowadays——”
Storm laughed shortly.
“My dear George, I wouldn’t give you an opinion on any man’s honesty. Given the incentive and the opportunity, how do we know where anyone gets off?”
“Oh, come, Norman!” George’s tone was scandalized. “That’s a pretty broad assertion. We’re not all potential criminals!”
“No?” Storm paused to light a cigar. “Well, if we’re not you must admit that the opportunities lie around thick enough. The wonder of it is that there isn’t more crookedness going on!”
“The example of what happens to the fellow who has tried it is a deterrent, I imagine,” George observed sententiously. “When he’s caught——”
“And whenishe caught except through his own negligence and loss of nerve?” demanded Storm, the train of thought which had occupied his mind an hour before recurring to him. “Certainly it isn’t through the extraordinary ability of society at large to track him down. A man gives himself away; he is safe until he makes a mistake.”
“Then every crook in the world must be a bungler, for they’re all caught, sooner or later,” George retorted. “The cleverest ones over-reach themselves in time.—Take this fellow Jan Martens, or whatever his real name is. To be sure, he hasn’t been caught yet, but his game is up; he tried it once too often.”
“Martens?” Storm repeated absently, his mind fixed upon his own argument.
“Haven’t you looked at the evening papers?” asked George. “He’s been working an old con. game with a new twist and getting the suckers for anything from five to fifty thousand. Worked Boston and Philadelphia before he came here and got away with a tremendous haul. They only got the goods on him to-day, but he had skipped. It was a clever stunt, too; he played upon a combination of sympathy and cupidity in his victims that only failed when he tackled a wise one. His line was getting loans on forged securities for rebuilding demolished property in France and Belgium——”
“What?”
Storm was not conscious that he had spoken, that he had turned and was staring at his visitor with wild eyes. He only knew that George’s solid, compact figure was wavering oddly, and his voice seemed to come from far away.
“He rather upsets your theory, Norman,” George continued complacently, ignorant of the effect of his disclosure. “He wasn’t giving himself away, by a long shot, and his paraphernalia was certainly elaborate and imposing enough in all conscience! In Boston he posed as Jan Martens, a Belgian looking for a loan to rebuild the family chateau and giving forged Congo properties as security. It worked so well that when he came here he tried to improve on it, and over-reached himself, as I contended a few minutes ago.
“A lot of foreigners are over here now trying to negotiate perfectly legitimate loans on the same order, but with bona fide securities to offer, and he fell in with one of them who was vouched for at the French consulate here, a citizen of Lille named Du Chainat.”
Storm drew a long breath.
“But this—Du Chainat is all right, you say?” he stammered. “His proposition was legitimate?”
“Absolutely. He must have taken this Martens into his confidence, shown him his papers and left them where the crook could get at them, for Martens forged a duplicate set,—they found the stacks of counterfeit government deeds and grants, both Belgian and French, in his room to-day together with official letter-heads from the consulates,—and then when Du Chainat returned to France he impersonated him. Du Chainat had put through his loan all right with Whitmarsh.”
“When——” Storm moistened his dry lips. “When did this Du Chainat leave America?”
“Three weeks ago, according to the paper. The impostor was only exposed through a woman, too, a rich widow whom he approached yesterday with his proposition; but he didn’t take into consideration the fact that she had lived abroad. As it happened, she knew the Du Chainat family in Lille, but by the time she made up her mind to risk notoriety and inform the police of the attempted swindle the bird had flown.”
He paused, but Storm had heard only the first three words of his utterance. “Three weeks ago”! And only a week had passed since he handed to the bogus Du Chainat every cent he had in the world! It couldn’t be true! There must be some hideous mistake!
“Here, it’s all in the paper. I was reading about it while I waited for you. Want to see it?”
George picked up the newspaper from the table where he had dropped it on entering, and Storm seized it, hoping blindly, doggedly against all hope. His luck could not have deserted him! Fate would not play him such a ghastly trick now!
But the headlines stared at him in uncompromising type, and the article itself left no room for doubt. He had been despoiled of his only means of freedom! Penniless, he was chained forever to the environs of the past, to the friends who had been Leila’s, the life of which she had been a part. The curse was upon him, and he might not even flee from the memories which dogged him! He was bound hand and foot, held fast!