Roderick was overwhelmed by all this grandiloquence. He hardly dared to take his old chum's arm as they walked along the street. But at last he stopped, burst out laughing, and slapped the man of affairs squarely between the shoulders.
"Whitley, old chap, you're a wonder. You play the part to perfection."
"Play the part?" protested Whitley, with a fine assumption of dignity. "I _am_ the part--the real thing. I'm your rich old uncle's right hand man, and don't you forget it. Would a little ready cash now be a convenience?"
Then Whitley's arm went round his comrade's neck, and with a simultaneous whoop of laughter they passed into the hotel.
But during the next twenty-four hours Roderick saw very little of his college chum. And during the same period the said college chum accomplished some very remarkable things. Immediately after dinner the bob-sled sped out to Conchshell ranch, and General Holden signed the legal papers that attached, as a measure of precaution, the bonds standing in the name of W. B. Grady and now in the custody of the bank at Keokuk as security for a loan. And for half the night Attorney Ben Bragdon and Whitley Adams were closeted with W. B. Grady in a private parlor of the hotel, and the fight was fought out for legal possession of the fraudulently acquired bonds--a fight that put the issue squarely up to Grady whether he would accept Banker Allen Miller's terms of surrender or face a criminal charge. It was in the grey of the breaking dawn that the vanquished Grady crept out of the hotel, wiping the beads of cold sweat from his brow, while Whitley was quietly folding up the properly signed transfers that gave back to General Holden bonds of equal value to those of which he had been robbed by false pretences and promises never fulfilled.
In the morning Whitley was again at the Conchshell ranch, and breakfasted with the General and his daughter. It was the latter who bound him to secrecy--to the solemn promise that neither he nor Mr. Bragdon should divulge to anyone the story of this restored family fortune. Gail declared that she was going to make good with her dairy cattle venture, that neither she nor her father wanted to return to the old life of fashion and society at Quincy, that they had no wish to appear as rich folks. Whitley listened to all the arguments, understood, and promised. And that the transfer of the bonds should not be connected with General Holden's name it was agreed that for the present they should pass to Banker Allen Miller as family trustee.
