第59章

He had intended to be cold.Scenting a "hard-luck yarn" and a "touch" he lowered his temperature to the point at which conversation is ice-beset and confidences are frozen tight.

Fanshaw's nerve deserted him."Herron," he said, dropping his prosperous pose, "I want to get a divorce and I want to punish Dumont."Herron's narrow, cold face lighted up.He knew what everybody in their set knew of Fanshaw's domestic affairs, but like everybody else he had pretended not to know.He changed his expression to one of shock and indignation.

"You astound me!" he exclaimed."It is incredible!""He told me himself not an hour ago," said Fanshaw."I went to him as a friend to ask him to help me out of a hole.And--"He rose and theatrically paced the floor.

Herron prided himself upon his acute conscience and his nice sense of honor.He felt that here was a chance to wreak vengeance upon Dumont--or rather, as he put it to himself, to bring Dumont to an accounting for his depravity.Just as Dumont maintained with himself a character of honesty by ignoring all the dubious acts which his agents were forced to do in carrying out his orders, so Herron kept peace with a far more sensitive conscience by never permitting it to look in upon his mind or out through his eyes.

"Frightful! Frightful!" he exclaimed, after a long pause in which his immured and blindfold conscience decided that he could afford to support Fanshaw."I knew he was a rascal in business--but THIS!"There was genuine emotion in his voice and in his mind.He was strict to puritanic primness in his ideals of feminine morality;nor had he been relaxed by having a handsome wife, looking scarce a day over thirty behind her veil or in artificial light, and fond of gathering about her young men who treated him as if he were old and "didn't count.""You are certain, Fanshaw?"

"I tell you, he hinted it himself," replied Fanshaw."And instantly my eyes were opened to scores of damning confirmations." He struck his forehead with his open hand.

"How blind I've been!" he exclaimed.

Herron shook his head sympathetically and hastened on to business.

"WE can't handle your case," he said."But Best and Sharpless, on the floor above, are reliable.And I'll be glad to help you with advice.I feel that this is the beginning of Dumont's end.I knew such insolent wickedness could not have a long course."Fanshaw drew Herron on to tell the story of his wrongs--the "swindling." Before it was ended Fanshaw saw that he had found a man who hated Dumont malignantly and was thirsting for vengeance.This encouraged him to unfold his financial difficulties.Herron listened sympathetically, asked ingeniously illuminating questions, and in the end agreed to tide him over.

He had assured himself that Fanshaw had simply undertaken too large an enterprise; the advance would be well secured; he would make the loan in such a way that he would get a sure profit, and would also bind Fanshaw firmly to him without binding himself to Fanshaw.Besides--"It wouldn't do for him to go to the wall just now."Arm in arm they went up to Best and Sharpless' to take the first steps in the suit.Together they went down-town to relieve Fanshaw of the pressure of the too heavy burden of copper stocks;then up to their club where he assisted Fanshaw in composing the breaking-off letter to Leonora.