What such a catastrophe would mean to Forbes nobody knew better than Luke, but how the Municipal Reform League could be concerned in it was beyond guessing.
"Won’t you try to begin at the beginning?" said Luke. He was used to getting coherent stories in preliminary interviews with incoherent witnesses, and he fell into his professional manner.
"It’s this way." Forbes turned his gray eyes away and fumbled with an ornament on the mantel-tree. "When you came into the Business, I had several loans outstanding—the Business had. They were all well secured, and you know how solid the concern’s always been. With the money you put in and the earnings, I was able to take up some of them, but there were the improvements and extensions made necessary by fresh competition and the new inventions and the machine-trust’s raise of prices. Well, I had to leave a loan outstanding at the East County National."
"Yes," said Luke encouragingly. "How much was it?"
"Two hundred and fifty thousand. It was a good deal, I know, but, you see, when I negotiated it——"
"Never mind the reasons now. What were its terms?"
"It was a call-loan," said Forbes in a shaken voice.
"What? And for two hundred and fifty thousand?"
"Yes. There was the competition. It was growing hot. The Business——"
"I was surprised myself at the time to find it so easy, but I was too glad to get it to ask questions. Now, I wish I had. I believe the bank was influenced by some people that wanted to get us into trouble—want to form a ready-made clothing trust."
"It’s incredible!" cried Luke. "Not one of the agents that I had look into your business for me mentioned this."
"I didn’t know that, Huber." Forbes looked his appeal. "I ask you to believe me."
"All right. It was my own fault. I should have asked you more questions. What puzzles me is how this loan was concealed."
"It was at the request of the bank. They said it was so unusual that they didn’t want it more widely known than was absolutely necessary, and I agreed because of the credit of the Business. Now I believe it was all a trap set by the men that want to form the trust."
Luke did not pause to waste reproaches over either his own stupid blindness or Forbes’s culpable rashness. He pressed forward: