Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/345

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

again, relentlessly, suspiciously, as fearing some ghastly trick.

Simon found his tongue. "For Mrs. George Judson."

Mr. George Judson turned deathly white, and for one staring moment his mouth was wide and motionless. "My wife?" he whispered, faint with emotion.

Simon put a steadying hand upon his shoulder. "It's genuine, George," he said, "and your wife owns that stock. She always has owned it since you gave itup. It was she who took your three million dollars' worth of bonds and saved you from those bloodsuckers. Templeton, another old friend of her father like myself, consented to act, merely as a dummy. Ellery Anderson was a legal fiction invented to relieve Templeton of the importunities of this Diamond Motors crowd."

George had weakly gripped the old man's arm for support, and for a time was silent, struggling with a new and violent current in his emotions.

"And she—it was she who saved the works for me that time," he remarked at last in low, breathless tones full of a gratitude that was almost worship.

"Yes," smiled Simon.

"Even while she hated them, she saved them for me," he murmured as if talking to himself;