ing the
place.

"Oh, it's you, Orde," said he.

"Your man told me you were not in," said Orde.

"He was mistaken. Won't you sit down?"

Orde entered the room and mechanically obeyed Newmark's suggestion,
his manner preoccupied. For some time he stared with wrinkled brow at a
point above the illumination of the lamp. Newmark, over the end of his
cigar, poised a foot from his lips, watched the riverman with a cool
calculation.

"Newmark," Orde began abruptly at last, "I know all about this deal."

"What deal?" asked Newmark, after a barely perceptible pause.

"This arrangement you made with Heinzman."

"I borrowed some money from Heinzman for the firm."

"Yes; and you supplied that money yourself."

Newmark's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Orde glanced toward him,
then away again, as though ashamed.

"Well," said Newmark at last, "what of it?"

"If you had the money to lend why didn't you lend it direct?"

"Because it looks better to mortgage to an outside holder."

An expression of profound disgust flitted across Orde's countenance.
Newmark smiled covertly, and puffed once or twice strongly on his nearly
extinct cigar.

"That was not the reason," went on Orde. "You agreed with Heinzman to
divide when you succeeded in foreclosing me out of the timber lands
given as security. Furthermore you instructed Floyd to go out on the eve
of that blow in spite of his warnings; and you contracted with McLeod
for the new vessels; and you've tied us up right and left for the sole
purpose of pinching us down where we couldn't meet those notes. That's
the only reason you borrowed the seventy-five thousand on your own
account; so we couldn't borrow it to save ourselves."

"It strikes me you are interesting but inconclusive," said Newmark, as
Orde paused again.

"That sort of thing is somewhat of a facer," went on Orde without the
slightest attention to the interjection. "It took me some days to work
it out in all its details; but I believe I understand it all now. I
don't quite understand how you discovered about my California timber.
That 'investigation' was a very pretty move."

"How the devil did you get onto that?" cried Newmark, startled for a
moment out of his cool attitude of cynical aloofness.

"Then you acknowledge it?" shot in Orde quick as a flash.

Newmark laughed in amusement.

"Why shouldn't I? Of course Heinzman blabbed. You couldn't have got it
all anywhere else."

Orde arose to his feet,