“Of course not, Wally. Uncle Chris sent it to me. Do you remember giving me a letter from him at Rochester? The check was in that.”
Wally stared.
“Your uncle! But he hasn’t any money!”
“He must have made it somehow.”
“But he couldn’t! How could he?”
Otis Pilkington suddenly gave tongue. He broke in on them with a loud noise that was half a snort and half a yell. Stunned by the information that it was Jill who had bought his share in the piece, Mr Pilkington’s mind had recovered slowly and then had begun to work with a quite unusual rapidity. During the preceding conversation he had been doing some tense thinking, and now he saw all.
“It’s a swindle! It’s a deliberate swindle!” shrilled Mr Pilkington. The tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. “I’ve been made a fool of! I’ve been swindled! I’ve been robbed!”
Jill regarded him with wide eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean!”
“I certainly do not! You were perfectly willing to sell the piece.”
“I’m not talking about that! You know what I mean! I’ve been robbed!”
Wally snatched at his arm as it gyrated past him in a gesture of anguish which rivalled the late efforts in that direction of Mr Goble, who was now leaning against the safety-curtain trying to get his breath back.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Wally curtly. “Talk sense! You know perfectly well that Miss Mariner wouldn’t swindle you.”
“She may not have been in it,” conceded Mr Pilkington. “I don’t know whether she was or not. But that uncle of her swindled me out of ten thousand dollars! The smooth old crook!”
“Don’t talk like that about Uncle Chris!” said Jill, her eyes flashing. “Tell me what you mean.”
“Yes, come on, Pilkington,” said Wally grimly. “You’ve been scattering some pretty serious charges about. Let’s hear what you base them on. Be coherent for a couple of seconds.”
Mr Goble filled his depleted lungs.
“If you ask me —” he began.
“We don’t,” said Wally curtly. “This has nothing to do with you. Well,” he went on, “we’re waiting to hear what this is all about.”
Mr Pilkington gulped. Like most men of weak intellect who are preyed on by the wolves of the world, he had ever a strong distaste for admitting that he had been deceived. He liked to regard himself as a shrewd young man who knew his way about and could take care of himself.
“Major Selby,” he said, adjusting his spectacles, which emotion had caused to slip down his nose, “came to me a few weeks ago with a proposition. He suggested the formation of a company to start Miss Mariner in the motion-pictures.”
“What!” cried Jill.
“In the motion-pictures,” repeated Mr Pilkington. “He wished to know if I cared to advance any capital towards the venture. I thought it over carefully and decided that I was favorably disposed towards the scheme. I —” Mr Pilkington gulped again. “I gave him a check for ten thousand dollars!”
“Of all the fools!” said Mr Goble with a sharp laugh. He caught Wally’s eye and subsided once more.
Mr Pilkington’s fingers strayed agitatedly to his spectacles.
“I may have been a fool,” he cried shrilly, “though I was perfectly willing to risk the money, had it been applied to the object for which I gave it. But when it comes to giving ten thousand dollars just to have it paid back to me in exchange for a very valuable piece, of theatrical property — my own money — handed back to me — !”
Words failed Mr Pilkington.
“I’ve been deliberately swindled!” he added after a moment, harking back to the main motive.
Jill’s heart was like lead. She could not doubt for an instant the truth of what the victim had said. Woven into every inch of the fabric, plainly hall-marked on its surface, she could perceive the signature of Uncle Chris. If he had come and confessed to her himself, she could not have been more certain that he had acted precisely as Mr Pilkington had charged. There was that same impishness, that same bland unscrupulousness, that same pathetic desire to do her a good turn however it might affect anybody else which, if she might compare the two things, had caused him to pass her off on unfortunate Mr Mariner of Brookport as a girl of wealth with tastes in the direction of real estate.