Part 32 (2/2)

”I didn't know what they meant to do,” Robert Morton stammered. ”I just thought they were going to lend us a hand at working up the thing.”

”A likely story!” sniffed Janoah with scorn. ”No siree! You came here as a tool--you were paid for it, I'll bet a hat!”

”You lie.”

”Prove it,” was the taunting response.

”I--I--can't prove it,” confessed the young man wretchedly, ”but Willie knows that what you accuse me of isn't so.”

With face alight with hope he turned toward the old man at his elbow; but no denial came from the expected source. Willie had sunk down on a pile of boards and buried his face in his hands.

”An' I thought they were my friends,” they heard him moan.

Robert Morton hesitated, then bent over the bowed figure, and as he did so Janoah, casting one last look of gloating delight at the ruin he had wrought, slipped softly from the room.

As he went out he heard a broken murmur from the inventor:

”I'll--I'll--not--believe it,” a.s.serted he feebly.

But despite the brave words, the seed of suspicion had taken root, and Robert Morton knew that Willie's confidence in him had been shaken.

Still the little old man clung with dogged persistence to his sanguine declaration:

”_I'll not believe it_!”

CHAPTER XVII

A GRIM HAND INTERVENES

The next morning saw a grave change in the household on the bluff.

Delight, with violet-circled eyes and cheeks whose rose tints had faded to pallor, listened with dread for the sound of the Galbraith's motor.

What the day would bring forth she feared to speculate. Willie and Bob also showed traces of a sleepless night. Although they had guarded from the others the happenings of the previous evening, between them loomed a barrier of mutual amazement and reproach. Beneath his attempted optimism Willie was wounded and indignant that he should have been deceived by those in whose kindness he had believed so whole-heartedly. He fought the facts with loyalty, obstinately trusting that some satisfactory explanation would be forthcoming, but he did not understand, and the dumb question that spoke in his eyes hurt Robert Morton more than any formulated reproach could have done.

It was human, the young man owned, that the inventor should resent having been tricked. He himself, throughout the weary watches of the night, had twisted and turned Janoah's d.a.m.ning testimony, struggling to explain it away by some simple and harmless interpretation; yet he was compelled to admit that the facts pointed in but one direction. And if he was baffled in his search for a way out, how much more so must Willie be? Why, he would be almost superman if he did not surrender his faith before such convincing evidence.

To the grief he experienced at forfeiting the little old man's trust, Robert Morton was also compelled to add the bitterness of discovering that those whose friends.h.i.+p was dearest to him had betrayed it and used him as a stool pigeon in a contemptible plot that he would have scorned to further had he been cognizant of it. He wondered, as he turned restlessly on his pillow, whether it was Mr. Galbraith with whom the duplicity originated or whether the conspiracy of yesterday was one of Snelling's hatching. Was it not possible the employee desired the invention for his own profit? That, to be sure, would be calamity enough, but it would at least clear Mr. Galbraith of theft and reinstate him in the young man's confidence. If only that could be the answer to the riddle, how thankful he would be!

Well, until he could be brought face to face with the capitalist, it was futile to attempt to unravel the enigma. How he longed in his bewilderment for the sympathy and counsel of a fresh perspective! But on Tiny's discretion he could place no reliance and even had he been able to do so, everything within him shrank from the disloyalty of voicing evil against his friends until he had proof. Delight was also an impossible confidant because of her recently discovered relations.h.i.+p to the Galbraith family. To breathe a word which might at this delicate juncture prejudice her against her new relatives would be contemptible. No, there was nothing to be done but be patient and maintain in the meantime as close a semblance to a normal att.i.tude as was possible.

Fortunately the silence that settled down upon the silvered cottage caused no surprise to any of its occupants. Having been warned not to chatter, Celestina observed a welcome quietness perfectly understood.

Nor was it strange that in view of the shock Delight had received she should be more thoughtful than usual. n.o.body commented either on Willie's abandonment of his inventing, or gave heed that he and Robert Morton spoke little together. How could the Galbraiths, Bob's best friends, be discussed in his presence? There was abundant explanation, therefore, why a strained atmosphere should prevail and pa.s.s unnoticed without either Celestina or Delight suspecting that its cause was other than the disclosures made by Madam Lee on the previous afternoon.

Nevertheless, eager as was each of the household to have speculation satisfied and the future with whatever it might contain unfold, there was a simultaneous start of apprehension when the Galbraiths' familiar red car stopped at the gate of the cottage. From it alighted neither Mr. Snelling nor any member of the family, but instead the chauffeur gravely delivered to Robert Morton a hastily scrawled note written in Mr. Galbraith's spreading hand. Marveling a little that it was he to whom the communication should be addressed, the young man broke the seal of the letter.

Madam Lee, he read, weary with excitement, had retired almost immediately after their departure, the maid attending her having left her sleeping like a tired child; but when they had gone to arouse her in the morning, it had been only to find that she had pa.s.sed quietly away in her sleep without struggle or suffering. Snelling had gone over to New York to make the necessary funeral arrangements, and the family were to follow the next day. There was nothing Bob could do, but if he and Delight wished to accompany them, Mrs. Galbraith would be glad to have them. Madam Lee had been devoted to Bob, and it was Delight's unchallenged right to share in the final obsequies to her grandmother.

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