“I gave them to him in our office last Tuesday morning. He said he might want to go into the house before his father came home.”
“Did he say why he wanted to go into the house?”
“No.”
“Was he in the habit of going into it alone and during the family’s absence?”
“No.”
“Had he any clothes there? or any articles belonging to himself or his wife which he would be likely to wish to carry away?”
“No.”
“Yet he wanted to go in?”
“He said so.”
“And you gave him the keys without question?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Was that not opposed to your usual principles—to your way of doing things, I should say?”
“Perhaps; but principles, by which I suppose you mean my usual business methods, do not govern me in my relations with my brother. He asked me a favor, and I granted it. It would have to have been a much larger one for me to have asked an explanation from him before doing so.”
“Yet you are not on good terms with your brother; at least you have not had the name of being, for some time?”
“We have had no quarrel.”
“Did he return the keys you lent him?”
“No.”
“Have you seen them since?”
“No.”
“Would you know them if they were shown you?”
“I would know them if they unlocked our front door.”
“But you would not know them on sight?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mr. Van Burnam, it is disagreeable for me to go into family matters, but if you have had no quarrel with your brother, how comes it that you and he have had so little intercourse of late?”
“He has been in Connecticut and I at Long Branch. Is not that a good answer, sir?”
“Good, but not good enough. You have a common office in New York, have you not?”
“Certainly, the firm’s office.”
“And you sometimes meet there, even while residing in different localities?”
“Yes, our business calls us in at times and then we meet, of course.”
“Do you talk when you meet?”
“Talk?”
“Of other matters besides business, I mean. Are your relations friendly? Do you show the same spirit towards each other as you did three years ago, say?”
“We are older; perhaps we are not quite so voluble.”