"A NOTE!" he repeated. "'Bije put his NOTE in the safe? A note promisin' to pay all he'd stole! And left it there where it could be found? Why, that's pretty nigh unbelievable, Mr. Sylvester! He might just as well have confessed his crookedness and be done with it.""Yes. It is unbelievable, but it is true. Graves can show you the note."The junior partner produced a slip of paper from the portfolio and regarded it frowningly.
"Of all the pieces of sheer lunacy," he observed, "that ever came under my observation, this is the worst. Here it is, Captain Warren."He extended the paper. Captain Elisha waved it aside.
"I don't want to see it--not yet," he protested. "I want to think.
I want to get at the reason if I can. Why did he do it?""That is what we've been tryin' to find--the reason, remarked Kuhn, "and we can only guess. Sylvester has told you the guess. Rodgers Warren intended, or hoped, to make restitution before he died.""Yes. Knowin' 'Bije, I can see that. He was weak, that was his main trouble. He didn't mean to be crooked, but his knees wa'n't strong enough to keep him straight when it come to a hard push.
But he made his note payable to a Company that was already sold out, so it ain't good for nothin'. Now, why--"Graves struck the table with his open hand.
"He doesn't understand at all," he exclaimed, impatiently.
"Captain Warren, listen! That note is made payable to the Akrae Company. Against that company some unknown stockholder has an apparent claim for two-fifths of all dividends ever paid and two-fifths of the seven hundred and fifty thousand received for the sale. With accrued interest, that claim amounts to over five hundred thousand dollars.""Yes, but--"
"That note binds Rodgers Warren's estate to pay that claim. His own personal estate! And that estate is not worth over four hundred and sixty thousand dollars! If this stockholder should appear and press his claim, your brother's children would be, not only penniless, but thirty thousand dollars in debt! There! Ithink that is plain enough!"
He leaned back, grimly satisfied with the effect of his statement.
Captain Elisha stared straight before him, unseeingly, the color fading from his cheeks. Then he put both elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands.
"You see, Captain," said Sylvester, gently, "how very serious the situation is. Graves has put it bluntly, but what he says is literally true. If your brother had deliberately planned to hand his children over to the mercy of that missing stockholder, he couldn't have done it more completely."Slowly the captain raised his head. His expression was a strange one; agitated and shocked, but with a curious look of relief, almost of triumph.
"At last!" he said, solemnly. "At last! Now it's ALL plain!""All?" repeated Sylvester. "You mean--?"
"I mean everything, all that's been puzzlin' me and troublin' my head since the very beginnin'. All of it! NOW I know why! Oh, 'Bije! 'Bije! 'Bije!"Kuhn spoke quickly.
"Captain," he said, "I believe you know who the owner of that one hundred shares is. Do you?"Captain Elisha gravely nodded.
"Yes," he answered. "I know him."
"What?"
"You do?"
"Who is it?
The questions were blurted out together. The captain looked at the three excited faces. He hesitated and then, taking the stub of a pencil from his pocket, drew toward him a memorandum pad lying on the table and wrote a line upon the uppermost sheet. Tearing off the page, he tossed it to Sylvester.
"That's the name," he said.
