Part 105

“I'll come in and wait,” said he quietly.

“Yes, sir, this way, sir,” said Mallock, trying to indicate the dining-room, where he wished Orde to sit until he could come at his master's wishes in the matter.

Orde caught the aroma of tobacco and the glimmer of light to the left. Without reply he turned the knob of the door and entered the library.

There he found Newmark in evening dress, seated in a low easy chair beneath a lamp, smoking, and reading a magazine. At Orde's appearance in the doorway, he looked up calmly, his paper knife poised, keeping the place.

“Oh, it's you, Orde,” said he.

“Your man told me you were not in,” said Orde.

“He was mistaken. Won't you sit down?”

Orde entered the room and mechanically obeyed Newmark's suggestion, his manner preoccupied. For some time he stared with wrinkled brow at a point above the illumination of the lamp. Newmark, over the end of his cigar, poised a foot from his lips, watched the riverman with a cool calculation.

“Newmark,” Orde began abruptly at last, “I know all about this deal.”

“What deal?” asked Newmark, after a barely perceptible pause.

“This arrangement you made with Heinzman.”

“I borrowed some money from Heinzman for the firm.”

“Yes; and you supplied that money yourself.”

Newmark's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Orde glanced toward him, then away again, as though ashamed.

“Well,” said Newmark at last, “what of it?”

“If you had the money to lend why didn't you lend it direct?”

“Because it looks better to mortgage to an outside holder.”

An expression of profound disgust flitted across Orde's countenance. Newmark smiled covertly, and puffed once or twice strongly on his nearly extinct cigar.

“That was not the reason,” went on Orde. “You agreed with Heinzman to divide when you succeeded in foreclosing me out of the timber lands given as security. Furthermore you instructed Floyd to go out on the eve of that blow in spite of his warnings; and you contracted with McLeod for the new vessels; and you've tied us up right and left for the sole purpose of pinching us down where we couldn't meet those notes. That's the only reason you borrowed the seventy-five thousand on your own account; so we couldn't borrow it to save ourselves.”

“It strikes me you are interesting but inconclusive,” said Newmark, as Orde paused again.

“That sort of thing is somewhat of a facer,” went on Orde without the slightest attention to the interjection. “It took me some days to work it out in all its details; but I believe I understand it all now. I don't quite understand how you discovered about my California timber. That 'investigation' was a very pretty move.”

“How the devil did you get onto that?” cried Newmark, startled for a moment out of his cool attitude of cynical aloofness.

“Then you acknowledge it?” shot in Orde quick as a flash.

Newmark laughed in amusement.

“Why shouldn't I? Of course Heinzman blabbed. You couldn't have got it all anywhere else.”

Orde arose to his feet, and half sat again on the arm of his chair.

“Now I'll tell you what we will do in this matter,” said he crisply.

But Newmark unexpectedly took the aggressive.