"This League," he said, "is pledged to a course of action you don’t agree with, so you can’t consistently remain in it."
"I will!—I _will_ get out!" cried Yeates. "I’d like to know who had more to do with this League: you or me. Why, you only came in the other day, and it was me and my friends got you in. But I’ll get out all right: you needn’t worry about that. I’m through."
He left the room. It was a few weeks later when Luke heard of Yeates’s engagement to the girl whose diamond pendant Luke had admired the first time that he went to the Ruysdaels’ house. That, Huber knew, was indeed coincidence, but the previous connection of Yeates with the Municipal Reform League served the more to shake Luke’s confidence in the radicalism of some of its remaining members.
§3. His mission to Ruysdael was far more satisfactory than his talk with Yeates. Luke did not tell the millionaire the circumstances that made it necessary for R. H. Forbes & Son to borrow money, nor, as things fell out, did he have to explain why the Ruysdael estate, and not a bank, was wanted as a creditor. He went into details only concerning the nature of the securities that Forbes could offer; he was honest about the chances of the business, which he believed to be good, and he was no more pressing in his request than he thought it wise to be.
"So," said Ruysdael, smiling, "you find some use for predatory wealth, after all?"
Luke remembered Jack Porcellis’s assertion that the Ruysdaels were in some way connected with the forces now opposed to the loan, but the connection, if it existed, must be slight. The Ruysdael money was not in a form that could well be hurt by Luke’s enemies; and Ruysdael, though subsequent pressure might well stop him from further aid, was the sort of man who, having gone into such a venture as the present one, would not undo anything he had already done.
"I don’t consider you one of the pirates," said Luke.
"No? Well, I’m not active, perhaps," Ruysdael reassured him. "I was just thinking you rather strong in some of your public utterances. There’s no use in attacks unless they can win, you know."
The swarthy man was interested in Huber’s request, though solely on Huber’s own account. Ruysdael felt that he had been in a measure responsible for Luke’s investment, and he was anxious to protect that investment so long as the protection was real and not a mere tossing of good money after bad. He took Luke at once to the offices of the Ruysdael estate.
