I came on board, that I would do a lot of reading, but I believe the sea-air makes one lazy. I must confess I feel entirely indifferent to mental improvement.'
'You evidently do not think my conversation will be at all worth listening to.'
'How quick you are to pervert my meaning! Don't you see that I think your conversation better worth listening to than the most interesting or improving book you can choose from the library? Really, in trying to avoid giving you cause for making such a remark, I have apparently stumbled into a worse error. I was just going to say I would like your conversation much better than a book, when I thought you would take that as a reflection on your reading. If you take me up so sharply I will sit here and say nothing. Now then, talk!'
'What shall I say?'
'Oh, if I told you what to say I should be doing the talking. Tell me about yourself. What do you do in London?'
'I work hard. I am an accountant.'
'And what is an accountant? What does he do? Keep accounts?'
'Some of them do; I do not. I see, rather, that accounts which other people keep have been correctly kept.'
'Aren't they always correctly kept? I thought that was what book-keepers were hired for.'
'If books were always correctly kept there would be little for us to do; but it happens, unfortunately for some, but fortunately for us, that people occasionally do not keep their accounts accurately.'
'And can you always find that out if you examine the books?'
'Always.'
'Can't a man make up his accounts so that no one can tell there is anything wrong?'
'The belief that such a thing can be done has placed many a poor wretch in prison. It has been tried often enough.'
'I am sure they can do it in the States. I have read of it being done and continued for years. Men have made off with great sums of money by falsifying the books, and no one found it out until the one who did it died or ran away.'
'Nevertheless, if an expert accountant had been called in, he would have found out very soon that something was wrong, and just where the wrong was, and how much.'
'I didn't think such cleverness possible. Have you ever discovered anything like that?'
'I have.'
'What is done when such a thing is discovered?'
'That depends upon circumstances. Usually a policeman is called in.'
'Why, it's like being a detective. I wish you would tell me about some of the cases you have had. Don't make me ask so many questions. Talk.'
'I don't think my experiences would interest you in the least. There was one case with which I had something to do in London, two years ago, that——'
'Oh, London! I don't believe the book-keepers there are half so sharp as ours. If you had to deal with American accountants, you would not find out so easily what they had or had not done.'
'Well, Miss Brewster, I may say I have just had an experience of that kind with some of your very sharpest American book-keepers. I found that the books had been kept in the most ingenious way with the intent to deceive. The system had been going on for years.'
'How interesting! And did you call in a policeman?'
'No. This was one of the cases where a policeman was not necessary. The books were kept with the object of showing that the profits of the m—of the business—had been much greater than they really were. I may say that one of your American accountants had already looked over the books, and, whether through ignorance or carelessness, or from a worse motive, he reported them all right. They were not all right, and the fact that they were not, will mean the loss of a fortune to some people on your side of the water, and the saving of good money to others on my side.'
'Then I think your profession must be a very important one.'
'We think so, Miss Brewster. I would like to be paid a percentage on the money saved because of my report.'
'And won't you?'
'Unfortunately, no.'
'I think that is too bad. I suppose the discrepancy must have been small, or the American accountant would not have overlooked it?'
'I didn't say he overlooked it. Still, the size of a discrepancy does not make any difference. A small error is as easily found as a large one. This one was large. I suppose there is no harm in my saying that the books, taking them together, showed a profit of forty thousand pounds, when they should have shown a loss of nearly half that amount. I hope nobody overhears me.'
'No; we are quite alone, and you may be sure I will not breathe a word of what you have been telling me.'
'Don't breathe it to Kenyon, at least. He would think me insane if he knew what I have said.'
'Is Mr. Kenyon an accountant, too?'
'Oh no. He is a mineralogist. He can go into a mine, and tell with reasonable certainty whether it will pay the working or not. Of course, as he says himself, any man can see six feet into the earth as well as he can. But it is not every man that can gauge the value of a working mine so well as John Kenyon.'
'Then, while you were delving among the figures, your companion was delving among the minerals?'
'Precisely.'
'And did he make any such startling discovery as you did?'
'No; rather the other way. He finds the mines very good properties, and he thinks that if they were managed intelligently they would be good paying investments—that is, at a proper price, you know—not at what the owners ask for them at present. But you can have no possible interest in these dry details.'
'Indeed, you are mistaken. I think what you have told me intensely interesting.'
For once in her life Miss Jennie Brewster told the exact truth. The unfortunate man at her side was flattered.
'For what I have told you,' he said, 'we were offered twice what the London people pay us for coming out here. In fact, even more than that: we were asked to name our own price.'
'Really now! By the owners of the property, I suppose, if you wouldn't tell on them?'
'No. By one of your famous New York newspaper men. He even went so far as to steal the papers that Kenyon had in Ottawa. He was cleverly caught, though, before he could make any use of what he had stolen. In fact, unless his people in New York had the figures which were originally placed before the London Board, I doubt if my statistics would have been of much use to him even if he had been allowed to keep them. The full significance of my report will not show until the figures I have given are compared with those already in the hands of the London people, which were vouched for as correct by your clever American accountant.'
'You shouldn't run down an accountant just because he is American. Perhaps there will come a day, Mr. Wentworth, when you will admit that there are Americans who are more clever than either that accountant or that newspaper man. I don't think your specimens are typical.'
'I
