[40]

“Do you know him?”

“Never saw him but once or twice. He has very good manners.”

“Is he rich?”

“He was, but after he had spent his youth working with incredible industry and a great deal of ability to build up a steel business and had put it into a little combination—not a big trust, just a genuine corporation—some of the financial princes wanted it for a club—to knock down bigger game, I reckon—and proceeded to cheapen the stock in order to control it. Cary held on desperately, bought more than he could hold, mortgaged everything else; but they were too big for him to fight. It was in 1903, you know, when they had an alleged financial panic, and scared the banks. Cary went to the wall, and Phil with him, and poor Phil killed himself. Afterward Cary’s wife died; he surely did have a mean time. And, to tell you the truth, Bertie, I think there has been a little kink in Cary’s mind ever since.”

“Did you hold any of Cary’s stock?” He was piecing his puzzle together.

[41]“Yes, but my stock was all paid for, and I held on to it; now it is over par and paying dividends. Oh, the property was all right, had it been kept in honest hands and run for itself. The trouble with Cary was that in order to keep control of the property he bought a lot of shares on margins, and when they began to run downhill, he was obliged to borrow money on his actual holdings to protect his fictitious ones. The stock went so low that he was wiped out. He wouldn’t take my advice earlier in the game; and I knew that it would only be losing money to lend it to him, later—still, sometimes I have been rather sorry I didn’t. Would I better try the spade, Bertie, or the diamond?”

[41]

The colonel advised the spade. He wondered whether he should repeat to his aunt the few sentences which he had overheard from Mercer and his companion; but a belief that old age worries easily, added to his natural man’s disinclination to attack the feminine nerves, tipped the scales against frankness. So, instead, he began to talk about Archie; what was he like? was he fond of athletics? or was he a bookish lad? Aunt Rebecca reported that he had liked riding and golf; but he was not very rugged, and since his father’s[42] death he had seemed listless to a degree. “But he is better now,” she added with a trace of eagerness quite foreign to her usual manner. “Janet Smith has roused him up; and what do you suppose she has done? 

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