Part 59 (2/2)

All this was of little help. The only information of any possible value was that concerning the bonds which Egbert had contributed as his share of the margin. Those, according to the brokers, were two City of Boston 4-1/2s, of one thousand dollars each, numbered A610,312 and A610,313.

Kent would have stayed and talked for hours if Kendrick had permitted.

He was as nervous as ever, even more so, because the days were pa.s.sing and the time drawing near when his brother-in-law would demand settlement. The captain comforted him as well as he could, bade him write his sister or her husband that he would remit early in the following week, and sent him home again more hopeful, but still very anxious.

”I don't see how I'm going to get the money, Cap'n Kendrick,” he kept repeating. ”I don't see how all this helps us a bit. I don't see----”

Kendrick interrupted at last.

”You don't have to see,” he declared. ”You've left it to me, now let me see if _I_ can see. I told you that, somehow or other, I'd tow you into deep water. Well, give me a chance to get up steam. You write that letter to your brother-in-law and hold him off till the middle of next week. That's all you've got to do. I'll do the rest.”

So Kent had to be satisfied with that. He departed, professing over and over again his deathless grat.i.tude. ”If you do this, Cap'n Kendrick,” he proclaimed, ”I never, never will forget it. And when I think how I treated you I can't see why you do it. I never heard of such----”

”Sshh! shhh!” The captain waved him to silence. ”I don't know why I am doin' it exactly, George,” he said.

”I do. You're doing it for my sake, of course, and----”

”Sshh! I don't know as I am--not altogether. Maybe I'm doin' it to try and justify my own judgment of human nature--mine and Judge Knowles'. If that judgment isn't right then I'm no more use than a child in arms, and I need a guardian as much as--as----”

”As I do, you mean, I suppose. Well, I do need one, I guess. But I don't understand what you mean by your judgment of human nature. Who have you been judging?”

”Never mind. Now go home. Judah's out again and that's a mercy. I don't want him or any one else to know you come here to see me.”

George went, satisfied for the time, but Sears Kendrick, left face to face with his own thoughts, knew that he had told the young man but a part of the truth. It was not for Kent's sake alone that he had made the rash promise to get back eight hundred of the sixteen hundred, or another eight hundred to take its place. Neither was it entirely because he hoped to confirm his judgment in the case of Egbert Phillips. The real reason lay deeper than that. Kent had declared that he still loved Elizabeth Berry and that he had reason to think she returned that love.

Perhaps she did; in spite of some things she had said after their quarrel, it was possible--yes, probable that she did. If, by saving her lover from disgrace, he might insure her future and her happiness, then--then--Sears would have made rasher promises still and have undertaken to carry them out.

The brokers' letter helped but little, if any. He entered the names and numbers of the bonds in his memorandum book. Those bonds still perplexed him. He could not explain them, satisfactorily. It might be that Egbert had more left from his wife's estate than Judge Knowles expected him to have or that Bradley was inclined to think he had. Lobelia's will bequeathed to her beloved husband ”all stocks, bonds, securities, etc.,”

remaining. But Knowles had more than intimated that none remained. The pictures of the horses and the ladies in Egbert's room at Sarah Macomber's confirmed the captain's belief that the Phillips past had been a hectic one. It seemed queer that, out of the ruin, there should have been preserved at least two thousand dollars in good American--yes, City of Boston--bonds.

In the back of the Kendrick head was a theory--or the ghost of a theory--concerning those bonds. He did not like to believe it, he would not believe it yet, but it was a possibility. Elizabeth had been bequeathed twenty thousand dollars. She and Egbert had been close friends for a time. She had liked him, had trusted him. Of late, so Esther Tidditt said, that friends.h.i.+p had been somewhat strained. Was it possible that.... Humph! Well, Bradley might know. He was Elizabeth's guardian, he would know if her investments had been disturbed.

Then, too, if worst came to the worst and he had to raise the eight hundred, which he had promised Kent, by borrowing it, he could, he thought, arrange to get from Bradley an advance of that amount, or a part of it, against his salary as manager of the Fair Harbor.

So he determined, as the next move, to go to Orham and visit the lawyer.

On Sat.u.r.day morning, therefore, he and the Foam Flake once more journeyed along the wood road to Orham.

CHAPTER XVII

The trip was cold and long and tedious. The oaks and birches were bare of leaves and the lakes and little ponds looked chill and forbidding.

Judah's prophecy of a clear day was only partially fulfilled, for there were great patches of clouds driving before the wind and when those obscured the sun all creation looked dismal enough, especially to Kendrick, who was in the mood where any additional gloom was distinctly superfluous. But the Foam Flake jogged on and at last drew up beside the Bradley office.

Another horse and buggy were standing there and the captain was somewhat surprised to recognize the outfit as one belonging to the Bayport livery man. A gangling youth in the latter's employ was on the buggy seat and he recognized the Foam Flake first and his driver next.

”Why, good mornin', Cap'n,” hailed the youth. ”You over here, too?”

Sears, performing the purely perfunctory task of hitching the Foam Flake to a post, smiled grimly.

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