Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/90

78 I suppose it would be useless to ask a woman for proof?"

"The business manager whom her father appointed seemed to be a most capable and energetic man, who came well recommended. His first move was to take expensive offices on Broadway, which she thinks was unnecessary at that stage of the game, and to lease a factory much larger than was required. Then he negotiated with one of Flannigan's railways for sixty miles of line at an exorbitant figure when half a mile of disused track would have been sufficient. The net result of his business management was that in a month or two the thirty thousand dollars capital was gone."

"But why should Flannigan bribe Sarsfield-Mitcham's business manager to squander Flannigan's own money?"

"In the first place, thirty thousand dollars isn't a drop in the bucket to Flannigan, but the shrewdness of the man is shown by the fact that the money, even from his point of view, is not squandered. The expensive Broadway rooms were taken in the Flannigan building; the leased empty factory is owned by Flannigan. The sixty miles of track belongs to one of Flannigan's railways. The thirty thousand dollars Flannigan affirmed were his own, which may or may not have been true, have filtered back through Sarsfield-Mitcham's careless fingers into the Flannigan