You know the road, for your
father was a director, and I think the house has been prominent in its
banking affairs. Now, Jim, this poor girl, who, it seems, has recently
been acting as the judge's secretary, has just learned that that coup of
Reinhart and his crowd has completely ruined her father. The decline has
swamped his own fortune, and, what is worse, a million to a million and a
half of his trust funds as well, and the old judge--well, you and I can
understand his position. Yet I do not know that you just can, either, for
you do not quite understand our Virginia life and the kind of revered
position a man like Judge Sands occupies. You would have to know that to
understand fully his present purgatory and the terrible position of this
daughter, for it seems that since he began to get into deep water he has
been relying upon her for courage and ideas. From our talk I gather she
has a wonderful store of up-to-date business notions, and I am convinced
from what she lays out that the judge's affairs are hopeless, and, Jim,
when that old man goes down it will be a smash that will shake our State
in more ways than one.
"Up to now the girl has stood up to the blow like a man and has been able
to steady the judge until he presents an exterior that holds down
suspicion as to his real financial condition, although she says Reinhart
and his Baltimore lawyer, from the ruthless way they put on the screws to
shake out his holdings in the Air Line, must have a line on it that the
judge is overboard.
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