A Woman Intervenes by Robert Barr (reading list txt) 📕

your revenge. The more I think of that episode in Von Brent's office, the more I think you utterly failed to realize the dramatic possibilities of the situation.'

Kenyon was silent.

'Now, all this time you are wondering why I came here. Doubtless you wish to know what I want.'

'I have not the slightest interest in the matter,' said Kenyon.

'That is ungracious, but, nevertheless, I will continue. It is better, I see, to be honest with you, if a man wants to get anything from you. Now, I want to get a bit of information from you. I want to know where you got the money with which you bought the mine?'

'I got it from the bank.'

'Ah, yes, but I want to know who sent it over to you?'

'It was sent to me by George Wentworth.'

'Quite so; but _now_ I want to know who gave Wentworth the money?'

'You will have a chance of finding that out when you go to England, by asking him.'

'Then you won't tell me?'

'I can't tell you.'

'You mean by that, of course, that you won't.'

'I always mean, Mr. Longworth, exactly what I say. I mean that I can't tell you. I don't know myself.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really. You seem to have some difficulty in believing that anybody can speak the truth.'

'Well, it isn't a common vice, speaking the truth. You must forgive a little surprise.' He nursed his knee for a moment, and looked meditatively up at the ceiling. 'Now, would you like to know who furnished that money?'

'I have no curiosity in the matter whatever.'

'Have you not? You are a singular man. It seems to me that a person into whose lap twenty thousand pounds drops from the skies would have some little curiosity to know from whom the money came.'

'I haven't the slightest.'

'Nevertheless, I will tell you who gave the money to Wentworth. It was my dear friend Melville. I didn't tell you in New York, of course, that Melville and I had a little quarrel about this matter, and he went home decidedly huffy. I had no idea he would take this method of revenge; but I see it quite clearly now. He knew I had secured the option of the mine. There was a little trouble as to what our respective shares were to be, and I thought, as I had secured the option, I had the right to dictate terms. He thought differently. He was going to Von Brent to explain the whole matter; but I pointed out that such a course would do no good, the option being legally made out in my name, so that the moment your claim expired mine began. When this dawned upon him, he took the steamer and went to England. Now, I can see his hand in this artistic finish to the affair. It was a pretty sharp trick of Melville's, and I give him credit for it. He is a very much shrewder and cleverer man than I thought he was.'

'It seems to me, Mr. Longworth, that your inordinate conceit makes you always underestimate your friends, or your enemies either, for that matter.'

'There is something in that, Kenyon; I think you are more than half right, but I thought, perhaps, I could make it advantageous to you to do me a favour in this matter. I thought you might have no objection to writing a little document to the effect that the money did not come in time, and consequently, I had secured the mine. Then, if you would sign that, I would take it over to Melville and make terms with him. Of course, if he knows that he has the mine there will not be much chance of coming to any arrangement with him.'

'You can make no arrangements with me, Mr. Longworth, that involve sacrifice of the truth.'

'Ah, well, I suspected as much; but I thought it was worth trying. However, my dear sir, I may make terms with Melville yet, and then, I imagine, you won't have much to do with the mine.'

'I shall not have anything to do with it if you and Melville have a share in it; and if, as you suspect, Melville has the mine, I consider you are in a bad way. My opinion is that, when one rascal gets advantage over another rascal, the other rascal will be, as you say, "left."'

Longworth mused over this for a moment, and said:

'Yes, I fear you are right--in fact, I am certain of it. Well, that is all I wanted to know. I will bid you good-bye. I shan't see you again in Ottawa, as I shall sail very shortly for England. Have you any messages you would like given to your friends over there?'

'None, thank you.'

'Well, ta-ta!' And John was left to his packing. That necessary operation concluded, Kenyon sat down and thought over what young Longworth had told him. His triumph, after all, had been short-lived. The choice between the two scoundrels was so small that he felt he didn't care which of them owned the mine. Meditating on this disagreeable subject, he suddenly remembered a request he had asked Wentworth to place before the new owner of the mine. He wanted no favour from Melville, so he wrote a second letter, contradicting the request made in the first, and, after posting it, returned to his hotel, and went to bed, probably the most tired man in the city of Ottawa.


CHAPTER XXXIX.


This chapter consists largely of letters. As a general rule, letters are of little concern to anyone except the writers and the receivers, but they are inserted here in the hope that the reader is already well enough acquainted with the correspondents to feel some interest in what they have written.

It was nearly a fortnight after the receipt of the cablegram from Kenyon that George Wentworth found, one morning, on his desk two letters, each bearing a Canadian postage-stamp. One was somewhat bulky and one was thin, but they were both from the same writer. He tore open the thin one first, without looking at the date stamped upon it. He was a little bewildered by its contents, which ran as follows:

'MY DEAR GEORGE,

'I have just heard that Melville is the man who has bought the mine. The circumstances of the case leave no doubt in my mind that such is the fact; therefore, please disregard the request I made as to employment in the letter I posted to you a short time ago. I feel a certain sense of disappointment in the fact that Melville is the owner of the mine. It seems I have only kept one rascal from buying it in order to put it in the hands of another rascal.

'Your friend,

'JOHN KENYON.'

'Melville the owner!' cried Wentworth to himself. 'What could have put that into John's head? This letter is evidently the one posted a few hours before, so it will contain whatever request he has to make;' and, without delay, George Wentworth tore open the envelope of the second letter, which was obviously the one written first.

It contained a number of documents relating to the transfer of the mine. The letter from John himself went on to give particulars of the buying of the property. Then it continued:

'I wish you would do me a favour, George. Will you kindly ask the owner of the mine if he will give me charge of it? I am, of course, anxious to make it turn out as well as possible, and I believe I can more than earn my salary, whatever it is. You know I am not grasping in the matter of money, but get me as large a salary as you think I deserve. I desire to make money for reasons that are not entirely selfish, as you know. To tell you the truth, George, I am tired of cities and of people. I want to live here in the woods, where there is not so much deceit and treachery as there seems to be in the big towns. When I reached London last time, I felt like a boy getting home. My feelings have undergone a complete change, and I think, if it were not for you and a certain young lady, I should never care to see the big city again. What is the use of my affecting mystery, and writing the words "a certain young lady"? Of course, you know whom I mean--Miss Edith Longworth. You know, also, that I am, and have long been, in love with her. If I had succeeded in making the money I thought I should by selling the mine, I might have had some hopes of making more, and of ultimately being in a position to ask her to be my wife; but that and very many other hopes have disappeared with my recent London experiences. I want to get into the forest and recover some of my lost tone, and my lost faith in human nature. If you can arrange matters with the owner of the mine, so that I may stay here for a year or two, you will do me a great favour.'

George Wentworth read over the latter part of this letter two or three times. Then he rose, paced the floor, and pondered.

'It isn't a thing upon which I can ask anyone's advice,' he muttered to himself. 'The trouble with Kenyon is, he is entirely too modest; a little useful self-esteem would be just the thing for him.' At last he stopped suddenly in his walk. 'By Jove!' he said to himself, slapping his thigh, 'I shall do it, let the consequences be what they may.'

Then he sat down at his desk and wrote a letter.

'DEAR Miss LONGWORTH' (it began),

'You told me when you were here last that you wanted all the documents pertaining to the mine, in every instance. A document has come this morning that is rather important. John Kenyon, as you will learn by reading the letter, desires the managership of the mine. I need not say that I think he is the best man in the world for the position, and that everything will be safe in his hands. I therefore enclose you his letter. I had some thought of cutting out a part of it, but knowing your desire to have all the documents in the case, I take the liberty of sending this one exactly as it reached me, and if anyone is to blame, I am the person.

'I remain, your agent,

'GEORGE WENTWORTH.'

He sent this letter out at once, so that he would not have a chance to change his mind.

'It will reach her this afternoon, and doubtless she will call and see me.'

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say she did _not_ call, and she did not see him for many days afterwards; but next morning, when he came to his office, he found a letter from her. It ran:

'DEAR MR. WENTWORTH,

'The sending of Mr. Kenyon's letter to me is a somewhat dangerous precedent, which you must on no account follow by sending any letters you may receive from any other person to Mr. Kenyon. However, as you were probably aware when you sent the letter, no blame will rest on your shoulders, or on those of anyone else, in this instance. Still, be very careful in future, because letter-sending, unabridged, is sometimes a risky thing to do. You are to