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ying trouble struggling for expression.
"But--Mr. Swift--do you think that this wheat deal has hurt Uncle Alfred financially?"
Poor child! One could not smile at the simplicity of such a question. I now thought I knew the foundation of this new fear that was gripping at her heart. But I didn't--not entirely; there was another surprise in store for me.
"It is very likely," I soberly made answer.
For all I knew to the contrary, his entire fortune might have been wiped out in the crash; he might have been beggared, stripped utterly; although, since he had not engineered the corner single-handed, he would be obliged to meet only his proportion of the total loss, whatever that might be. An outsider might only guess.
"It is not charitable to think or speak ill of the dead," she was saying, "but, oh! what a cruel, pitiless man Mr. Page was. Think of the long years of persecution Uncle Alfred has had to endure."
But I was regarding the matter from quite a different point of view. I was thinking rather of that broken wheat corner as the culminating stroke of an implacable enemy; of the probability that the rifled safe contained more love-tokens similar to the card--so many more, in fact, that the thief did not miss the one he had lost. I was thinking that the warfare between the two men had its inception much farther back in the past than anybody had ever imagined, and that it was no longer strange why Page had wrested the ruby from his rival. One must consider Fluette's passion for collecting rare gems to appreciate to the full the consummate malice of that coup.
This disturbed pondering, however, carried me round in a circle. If there had been love-tokens in the safe from Clara Cooper, Alfred Fluette was the only man living who would have any interest in getting them from Page. Again, if Page's hatred of Fluette was so intense that he would part with a fortune merely to deprive his rival of a coveted jewel, would he give this same jewel to a nephew for whom he entertained no liking, knowing that the jewel was destined for his enemy, simply upon that nephew's demand? Why, the bare grouping of the facts discredited Maillot's story; he was left in a worse plight than before.
I trust it is at least clear how heterogeneous were the elements of this crime.
And then--to start swinging round the circle once more--if Alfred Fluette was entirely blameless of Felix Page's murder, the tragedy could not have occurred at a more unfortunate time for him. Considering all the circumstances, it would be no great strain upon the credulity to picture Fluette, driven to desperation, ridding himself of the foe that had hounded him to ruin.
There was nothing else for me to do except follow all these avenues to the end; but whichever was the right one, that end must be bitter. I met the piteous look in Genevieve Cooper's eyes, and my heart sank.
I have often been told that when I want it to be my countenance is illegible; assuredly, at this moment it was not my desire that she should glimpse the tumult of thought and emotion to which I was a prey; but I have reasons, numberless as the sands of the sea, for knowing that it never was indecipherable to the bright blue eyes now searching it so earnestly.
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