Another old friend and former partner has bought it in and sent up the
price. A common trick, a vulgar trick, but not a trick worthy of James
Stacy or Stacy's Bank!"
"But why not simply declare the forgery without making any specific
charge against Van Loo?"
"Do you imagine, Phil, that any man would believe it, and the story of a
providentially appointed friend like Barker who saved us from loss?
Why, all California, from Cape Mendocino to Los Angeles, would roar
with laughter over it! No! We must swallow it and the reputation of
'jockeying' with the Wheat Trust, too. That Trust's as good as done for,
for the present! Now you know why I didn't want poor Barker to know it,
nor have much to do with our search for the forger."
"It would break the dear fellow's heart if he knew it," said Demorest.
"Well, it's to save him from having his heart broken further that I
intend to find out this forger," said Stacy grimly. "Good-night, Phil!
I'll telegraph to you when I want you, and then COME!"
With another grip of the hand he left Demorest to his thoughts. In the
first excitement of meeting his old partners, and in the later discovery
of the forgery, Demorest had been diverted from his old sorrow, and for
the time had forgotten it in sympathetic interest with the present.
But, to his horror, when alone again, he found that interest growing as
remote and vapid as the stories they had laughed over at the table, and
even the excitement of the forged letter and its consequences began to
be as unreal, as impotent, as shadowy, as the memory of the attempted
robbery in the old cabin on that very spot.
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