[The Second Generation by David Graham Phillips]@TWC D-Link book
The Second Generation

CHAPTER XXI
12/57

In the second month after the annual meeting he cabled Dory to come home.

The entire foundation upon which Dory was building seemed to be going; Saint X was, therefore, the place for him, not Europe.
"And there you have all I have been able to find out," concluded Scarborough, when he had given Dory the last of the facts and figures.
"What do you make of it ?" "There's something wrong--something rotten," replied Dory.
"But where ?" inquired Scarborough, who had taken care not to speak or hint his vague doubts of Whitney.

"Everything _looks_ all right, except the totals on the balance sheets." "We must talk this over with some one who knows more about the business than either of us." Then he added, as if the idea had just come to him, "Why not call in Arthur--Arthur Ranger ?" Scarborough looked receptive, but not enthusiastic.
"He has been studying this business in the most practical way ever since his father died," urged Dory.

"It can't do any harm to consult with him.
We don't want to call in outside experts if we can help it." "If we did we'd have to let Mr.Whitney select them," said Scarborough.
And he drew Dory out upon the subject of Arthur and got such complete and intelligent answers that he presently had a wholly new and true idea of the young man whose boyish follies Saint X had not yet forgotten.

"Yes, let's give Arthur a chance," he finally said.
Accordingly, they laid the case in its entirety before Arthur, and he took home with him the mass of reports which Scarborough had gathered.
Night after night he and Madelene worked at the problem; for both knew that its solution would be his opportunity, _their_ opportunity.
It was Madelene who discovered the truth--not by searching the figures, not by any process of surface reasoning, but by that instinct for motive which woman has developed through her ages of dealing with and in motives only.


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