Golden Spring

I

TREVOR SILCOT, after fifteen years in an accountant’s office, had saved some fifteen hundred dollars. A lucky speculation in cotton increased this capital to five thousand. Then Silcot conceived the idea of floating a company.

The company would solemnly promise to do something exceedingly profitable, but after a decent interval announce regretfully that ‘it had proved impossible’ to earn anything. Then the company would go into liquidation, a receiver would be appointed, and the last obsequies would be duly administered. In the meantime the sums, large or small, contributed by the credulous public on the strength of the promoters’ promises would be handled by the promoters, devoted to necessary expenditure of various kinds, and in the final investigation would appear to have been carefully but fruitlessly consumed.

Fifteen years in a Broad Street office, London, E. C., had taught Silcot all he wanted to know about the flotation of companies — bogus and genuine. Hitherto, however, he had taken quite a subordinate part. Now he would take a hand as principal. Confederates like-minded with himself were soon found, who brought a certain equipment of banking and legal experience. All the usual preparatory measures were taken, and Silcot sailed in the Dunottar Castle for Capetown. He had determined that his company would discover and promise to develop a mine in South Africa. He had already named it Golden Spring.

On the voyage out Silcot made a careful study of such large-scale maps of the district north of the Transvaal as he had been able to procure in London.

On arriving in Capetown he investigated thoroughly the mining regulations, existing prospecting rights, and the location of all districts known to have been already surveyed by the large mining interests. He was not taking any risk in that quarter.

Finally he selected a certain unsurveyed area, some ninety miles northwest of Bulawayo, bought a few small lumps of gold-bearing quartz in Capetown, and set off to discover Golden Spring. At Bulawayo he learned that the land near the spot he was making for was owned by two farmers, William Blumton and Norman Fowler. Silcot made first for Blumton’s house, where he was very hospitably received.

‘We see white folk so rarely, Mr. Silcot,’ said Mrs. Blumton, ‘you will be doing us a real kindness if you stay two or three days with us and tell us all the news of the Old Country.’

Silcot readily assented. It was quiet and dull and hot, but he was tired of traveling and glad to have a little rest. Besides, if Blumton refused to do what he wanted, he might easily visit Fowler once or twice and capture him instead.

‘Talking of white folk, Mrs. Blumton,’ said Silcot, ‘you surely see the Fowlers?’

‘Oh, yes, of course; they live only three miles away, and we see them every three or four days. But I thought of them as part of ourselves. There are no other whites for thirty miles.’

Silcot thought to himself: ’This locality will suit Golden Spring all right, if Blumton comes up to scratch.’

That evening the two men sat on the verandah smoking their cigars and discussing the black problem and the Indian problem and the future of South Africa. Every now and then Silcot got in a question about crops or cattle, and soon made sure that Blumton had a hard time of it and was not making a fortune.

Next day, in walking over the farm, the Londoner came to the point at once.

‘Blumton, would you object to making some money easily ? ’

‘Silcot, would a duck swim?’ was the reply.

Silcot smiled, and went on: ‘ I am out here after gold.’

Blumton interjected: ‘There’s no gold here.’

‘That may well be true, but you and I between us might persuade a lot of people there is gold here. They would get no gold out of this ground, but we should get gold out of them.’

‘Good business,’ replied Blumton, ‘but I know nothing about these city games; where do I come in?’

‘In two ways,’ said Silcot. ‘First, sell me all mining rights on your land; second — but wait a bit,’ and, stopping suddenly, he kicked over four stones and, stooping, laid a lump of quartz where each stone had been and gently replaced the stones. Then he went on: ‘Would you mind lifting these stones away and picking up what you find there?’

Blumton did so, somewhat amused.

‘Now,’ said Silcot, ‘you could swear in a court of law you picked up these lumps of quartz on your own land?’

‘Certainly I could.’

‘Right!’ said Silcot. ‘Hold on to them; they are yours. They may be the only gold ever taken out of your land, but they may draw a lot into your pocket and mine. The second thing I want you to do is to write me a straightforward letter saying you found these specimens, and sign your name and address and give me authority to print the letter.’

‘And what am I to have for my share in it?’

‘For mining rights in your land that has no gold in it I ’ll give you two hundred pounds down directly you sign the contract papers. For the letter I’ll give you a hundred pounds in cash when I receive it, and allot you five hundred shares free when the company is floated.’

Blumton hesitated. He knew no one had been over his thousand acres prospecting for ores in any serious fashion since he had come there twelve years before. He knew that many a scallywag and broken man from the south had passed through the district trekking north or east, and their unanimous opinion was that there was no hope of ores of any sort in that region. Still, if this man, for purposes of fraud, wanted to buy mining rights, why not sell them as dear as he could? But Silcot had mentioned ‘swearing in a law court.’ Plainly there might be trouble, and Blumton wanted no trouble. So he said at last: ‘I’ll think about it, and let you know in a day or two.’

After some further talk the two men went home. That night Mr. Blumton told his wife of the scheme, making no secret of its fraudulent character. Somewhat to his surprise, she took the same view that he did. ‘The fraud is no business of yours,’ she said. ‘Besides, if silly people give away their money because Mr. Trevor Silcot tells them to, they deserve to lose it; and if he is willing to part with it to you for value received, you’re not cheating anybody.’

‘That’s right, my dear; that’s just what I think myself,’ replied her husband. ‘But if somebody prosecuted him, they would very likely include me for aiding and abetting. They would have my name to a published letter on the strength of which they gave their money.’

‘I would risk that,’ said Mrs. Blumton. ‘You’ll never make a hundred pounds so easily again in all your life. Besides, the losers will be certain to go for Silcot, and not dream of coming after you, from whom they could recover nothing.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Mr. Blumton, ‘but I don’t want to find myself in jail for conspiracy to defraud.’

' I would risk it,’maintained his wife; ‘they never could prove conspiracy.’

‘I am not so sure,’ answered her husband. ‘I will ride over to Wankie, where there’s a lawyer chap, and see what he says.’

‘Well, mind what you tell him,’ said Mrs. Blumton. ’If you give the show away, Silcot will find his mine somewhere else.’

Blumton left for Wankie on horseback early the next morning. He cunningly gave a false name and address, laid the main facts before the man of law, and for a couple of guineas was told he might sell mining rights if he liked, but that if he took payment for publishing false information he might find himself in jail.

He came home thoroughly cowed two days later, and, much to the disgust of his wife, told Silcot he must refuse to furnish the letter, but would sell the mining rights for five hundred pounds.

Silcot, however, had been making progress in Blumton’s absence, and was neither disappointed at his host’s announcement nor eager to do any business whatever. Finally, however, he allowed himself to be persuaded into buying the mining rights for two hundred pounds, to be paid when the contract was signed, and gave a written pledge to that effect.

Mr. Silcot had been calling on Mr Norman Fowler, who entered into the project with zest. Silcot had made him the same offer, going through the same pantomime with three more lumps of gold quartz. Fowler was quite as sure as Blumton that no other gold would ever be found there, and quite as clear that he was being asked to help in a swindle. But he had no immediate objections to Silcot’s proposals, and promised to sign the contract as soon as presented, and to write there and then the letter reporting ‘discovery.’ Silcot, however, had decided to draw up this letter himself, and said he would only trouble Fowler for his signature when he returned in a week or two with the necessary legal documents. After Silcot was gone, Fowler told his wife, who listened with growing anger.

‘The thieving scoundrel!’ she burst out at last. ‘You sent him about his business, I hope?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Fowler, somewhat weakly; ‘but I did n’t see why I should not make some money out of him.’

‘Oh, Norman, Norman!' she cried. ‘You surely never agreed to sign that lying letter?’

‘I don’t see any lie in it. I’ll not be saying anything in it that’s not true.’

‘Oh, Norman, how can you argue like that? You know you will be helping him to deceive thousands of people and helping him to steal their money. Else he would never pay you for it.’

‘If people are foolish enough to give Silcot their money for an idiotic project, I don’t think it fair to say he steals their money.’

‘And will your letter tell them how idiotic the project is? Oh, Norman, I never thought you would sink so low as to help a swindler to swindle people and take money for it.’

Then Fowler lost his temper and began to curse. His wife said no more that day.

It must be remembered that both Fowler and Blumton lived hard lives and made little money. To them a hundred pounds seemed quite a large sum. Both had in a sense fallen before the temptation, but Fowler began to recover himself with the help of his wife’s reproaches. He never thought such a thin, meek, clinging creature had such fighting spirit in her. Lying awake in his bed, he began to think of poor farmers like himself being persuaded by his letter to give their money to this rascal Silcot, or poor workingmen like his own brothers in Northumberland losing all their little savings because of a letter signed ‘Norman Fowler.’ If ever he met one of them afterward, what should he say ? ‘ I was greedy, and wanted a hundred pounds.’ What else could he say? Fowler was far from shameless. The more he thought of that letter, the more it revolted him.

Finally, after a day or two of reflection on his part and wise silence on his wife’s, conscience had her way, the hundred-pound bribe was dismissed with many fond lingering looks, Fowler promised his wife that he would sign no swindling letter, and Mrs. Fowler on her side conceded that there was nothing wrong in selling Silcot or anyone else the mining rights, however valueless, for a sum agreed on.

Silcot returned from Bulawayo within a fortnight, bringing with him an attorney and his clerk, and obtained the signatures of Blumton and Fowler to very carefully drawn deeds, which gave him all the powers he required to work minerals on their united lands. He paid them each two hundred pounds in Bank of England notes the same day. He concealed his disappointment when Fowler in a shamefaced way declined to sign the letter drawn up announcing the ‘find’ of gold. ‘Broke your word,’ was the sole reproach.

On his way home Silcot had the good fortune to meet two capable young brothers called Murray, living in Johannesburg. One was a fully qualified mining engineer, the other an accountant. Both were at the moment in poorly paid positions, making a bare living. Silcot, after some careful inquiries, engaged them both, gave each a retaining fee of a hundred pounds on the spot, and appointed them to have supreme control of his prospecting enterprise at Golden Spring in Rhodesia. They were to go down there and commence operations when he sent word, and word would come as soon as he was in command of the necessary funds. In the meantime, they were to keep all this strictly secret. They were to send him weekly reports of work and expenditure. If they came on anything profitable, they were to cable immediately one word — ‘Congratulations.’ And Silcot added, without a smile: ‘ And if you come on a certainty of large profit, such as will enable me to double your salaries, you may cable “ Heartiest congratulations.” ’ Meanwhile he promised them eight hundred pounds each for the first year. The two honest young faces glowed with pleasure and gratitude.

‘It is the first success, the first real kindness, we have met with in this country,’ said the elder Murray. ’Depend on it, Mr. Silcot, my brother and I will serve you loyally, and work to the bone to make you rich — if only the stuff is there,’ he added, after a pause.

‘I have secret information,’ said Silcot bravely, ‘but if you come on nothing I will not blame you.’

‘Thank you, sir. You may be sure we will do our best.’

When Silcot reached London, he found his two confederates had already sketched out the prospectus and secured two M. P.’s as directors, whose names would carry weight in ignorant quarters. Fifty thousand pounds were asked for in a hundred thousand shares of ten shillings each. The statements and promises and prospects were most adroitly expressed — nothing too glowing, but a hint here and there that a chance like this rarely came on the market, and that more could be told were it not likely to attract competitors, et cetera, et cetera. A certain discovery had been made, and a competent investigator had reported most favorably. The list would close in a few days, and so on, with all the names, as usual, of the respectable bankers, lawyers, and accountants who would act for the Golden Spring Mining Company, Limited.

Big people in the financial world sniffed audibly when they read this document. Big people in the mining world snorted. But whether because of the fat dividends paid that half year on the Rand, or the weighty names of the two guinea-pig directors, the money poured in. Five days saw the whole amount applied for. Silcot and his friends were staggered at their own success.

‘What’s the game now, Trevor?’ asked the banker comrade.

‘My idea,’ said Silcot, ‘is to stow away, under various plausible headings of expenditure, fifteen thousand pounds for us three — five thousand for you two, and ten thousand for myself. You brought in a thousand pounds each to the expenses of our preliminary inner cabinet, and you get more than double that. I am taking only double my original five thousand.’

‘Quite fair and kind of you; but what about the remainder?’ asked the legal brother.

‘Oh, I have cabled Murray to go ahead up to a limit of twenty thousand, and I am holding the rest in reserve.’

‘ Well, I only wanted to know. It’s a lot of good money to put in a hole in Africa.’

‘We can’t help ourselves, Joe. Don’t you see we must do something straight with part of it, anyway?’

II

Six months afterward Silcot sat in his own new office in Coleman Street, E. C., busily engaged with the second and final installment of the ten-shilling shares. The adverse opinion of all the important people had told on the market from the first, and the new shares, though now fully paid up, were quoted at 50 per cent discount. A steady stream of inquiries and complaints from anxious shareholders kept Silcot in a state of nervous irritability. The clerks and the girl typists hardly dared to speak. A storm was brewing.

A knock on the door, and the commissionaire entered with a cablegram. Silcot tore it open, and gazed at it so long, with motionless eyelids and changing color, that the commissionaire, in an anxious tone, asked: ‘Any answer, sir?’

‘No, Johnson, no — and take this shilling and bring me a brandy and soda quick.’

It was no wonder that Johnson, coming out from the inner sanctum, whispered to one of the clerks: ‘The boss has had a knock-out.’

But he was wrong. Even five minutes after taking the brandy and soda Silcot was gazing speechless at the three-word cable from Golden Spring: —

HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS MURRAY

Words need not be spent in describing the measures which followed immediately. All thoughts of fraud were dismissed. Silcot and his co-directors absorbed all the shares offered at a discount without betraying that they knew anything. But the secret could not be kept. Rumor soon got busy. The share price steadily mounted. As soon as the upward movement seemed to have spent itself, Silcot published part of a detailed report which by that time had arrived from his engineer-manager Murray, and the world learned that a gold-bearing reef as rich as any on the Rand had been reached at no great depth and proved to be at least half a mile in length.

Amid scenes of unusual excitement in Throgmorton Street, the ten-shilling shares rose to four pounds in two hours, and after some violent fluctuations achieved steadiness round about six pounds. The dividends began modestly, but in the third year reached 65 per cent per annum. Further capital was obtained with the greatest ease. In ten years the property of the Golden Spring Mining Company was valued in millions. Silcot and all who trusted him had then achieved wealth beyond their rosiest dreams.

III

The two hundred pounds which William Blumton and Norman Fowler each received were soon spent and forgotten.

When the two Murrays arrived with their gangs of black boys and their dozen white foremen, Blumton and Fowler made some little profit selling farm and dairy produce, and made a good many jokes about the supposed treasure that was to be unearthed.

One day Mrs. Blumton came home from the local store and said: ‘ William, something has happened. A fence is being put up all round the works, and fifty police have arrived, and they are to stay. The Fowlers say Murray has found something. They think it’s diamonds.’

‘My God! And Silcot offered me five hundred shares!’

‘Aye, and you refused him.’

‘Well, you know I did n’t want to do anything wrong.’

‘I know you had n’t the pluck.’

This was the beginning of many bitter wrangles. To his wife and to the Fowlers, Blumton always cursed that fool lawyer at Wankie. To the overseers whom he met at the new public house, he cursed Silcot as a thieving rascal who had tricked him, a poor innocent farmer, into selling all his mining rights for a mere bagatelle of two hundred pounds, when all the time he, Silcot, must have known there was plenty of the stuff in that ground. To this audience he never disclosed the story of the quartz and the offer he had refused. But one day, when he was denouncing Silcot as a liar and a plunderer, the elder Murray came in and listened.

‘Mr. Blumton,’ he said, very quietly, ‘if you bought a ram at Bulawayo and paid in full for him on the spot in good hard cash and took him home, and a month after t he vendor came down here and said he had discovered this ram was a pedigree ram of special breed and that you must make an additional large payment for him, what would you say?’

A bystander broke in: ‘Blumton would tell that ass to go to hell!’

A roar of laughter followed, in which Blumton, in spite of himself, had to join.

‘And let me tell you, Mr. Blumton,’ Murray went on, ‘the expressions you have used in a place of public resort against the character of Mr. Silcot, if repeated, may have consequences for you that you will regret.’

This hint had an immediate effect. Blumton henceforth held his tongue.

When the astonishing truth about Golden Spring became known to the Fowlers, Norman felt a somewhat painful shock. He had plumed himself on his rectitude. He had patted himself on the back for behaving like a man of principle. And now he was to suffer more and more for his honesty. God was punishing him for doing right! What kind of God was that? The higher the shares of Golden Spring went, the angrier he got. At last he burst out upon his wife.

‘Your scruples, my woman, have proved very expensive!’

Mrs. Fowler stood her ground. ‘A lie is dear at a hundred pounds,1 she retorted.

‘A hundred pounds!’ he shouted. ’silcot offered me five hundred shares as well! Do you know what those shares are worth to-day?’

‘If they were worth a million, I would not blacken my soul before God for them by telling a swindling lie!’

‘Oh, shut up, you idiot!1 roared her husband. ‘I was a fool when I listened to you and your religious blethers.’

When the Bulawayo Morning Post reported Golden Spring shares had reached six pounds, Fowler came home drunk. He was rather ashamed of himself next day, but refused to apologize. He had missed the chance of his life, he said, and it was all her fault.

‘Norman,’ protested the woman, ‘you know I saved you from doing wrong.’

‘Yes, and I’ll be sorry to my dying day that I did n’t do wrong!’

The wrangling went on and the drinking went on. Finally, after a year of misery, Mrs. Fowler borrowed her fare from Mrs. Blumton and returned to her mother’s house in Moffat, Scotland.

IV

Fifteen years after the opening of Golden Spring, Mrs. Blumton came back to her old home in Lockerbie, a few miles south of Moffat. The two friends often met. The young minister of Moffat, the Reverend Vincent Masson, got to know them, and, being a man of warm sympathies, soon learned the whole story of Golden Spring as these women knew it. In the summer of that year Mr. Masson went on a lecturing tour in the United States. He crossed the Atlantic on the Carmania, and found that one of his fellow passengers was a young widow, Lady Silcot.

An introduction was soon effected, and after several pleasant conversations Mr. Masson one day near the end of the voyage turned the talk to Golden Spring.

’Do you mind telling me, Lady Silcot, who guided your husband to that part of Rhodesia rather than any other part?’

‘Nobody, Mr. Masson,’ Lady Silcot replied.

‘Oh, but surely he had some secret information?’

‘None whatever, Mr. Masson.’

‘Then your husband, Lady Silcot, must have had the eye of genius to discover gold-bearing possibilities in a locality where nobody else thought of looking. There are men who spend their lives traveling and prospecting and never find anything to speak of.’

‘ I think Sir Trevor was a genius in his own line, but I know he started Golden Spring without a glimmer of hope he would take a grain of gold out of it. I can see by your face you disapprove, but I may tell you I put it straight to Sir Trevor, when he first told me the whole story, that it looked to me like a swindle. He replied, with a proud toss of his head: “I swindled nobody! I kept all my promises and discharged all my obligations!” And, now that he is gone, I get real comfort from the Scripture that says men shall be judged by their works. Think of the misery caused by men like Thackeray’s Colonel Newcome going into business for which they were grievously incompetent. The principles of the old Colonel were blameless, his ideals high, his intentions pure; but the damage was done and the misery inflicted, and they must be answered for somewhere. Think of the misery caused by incompetent parents, incompetent trustees, incompetent statesmen, i competent generals, whose motives and aims were above suspicion, as noble as Colonel Newcome’s. Is incompetence going to escape under a cloak of fine purpose? Not if God knows it.

‘Men shall be judged by their works. I know I found in Sir Trevor’s papers hundreds of letters from tradesmen, artisans, doctors, ministers, and widows, who thanked God for the man who induced them to take shares in Golden Spring.

‘Some of those letters, Mr. Masson, describe agonies of grinding poverty, and fear of worse, which vanished like snow in thaw the year of our great boom, and it is hard even yet to read them without emotion; while the letter that came from Mrs. Murray, the wife of a blacksmith in Dundee, telling of the toil and privation out of which she and her husband extracted enough money to educate their two boys, and invoking God’s blessing on Trevor Silcot for raising their salaries to two thousand pounds a year each — that letter, Mr. Masson, would have drawn tears from a heart of flint. So, when everybody’s accounts are made up, I think my husband will not fare so badly.’

Lady Silcot spoke with conviction, and the minister, touched by her loyalty and her loneliness, suppressed all he thought of saying in reply.

After a while he murmured: ‘Yes, it is a glorious privilege to be able to use wealth to make people happy who deserve to be made happy, and a glorious memory to know you did so use it.’

A silence of nearly half a minute followed, and then the first gleam of the lights of Nantucket and Long Island gave pretext for a change of subject.

That night, however, Mr. Masson pondered long on the respective demerits of the three men, Blumton, Fowler, and Silcot, who were willing to do wrong, but accidentally did no actual wrong in the flotation of the famous mine. When he had given his lectures at Boston as agreed on, he struck westward on a tour through Albany and Niagara to the Mississippi, and eastward again by Kentucky and Virginia to Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. A few days before he sailed for his own land, Mr. Masson, with two new American friends, sat in the verandah of a villa on the slopes of Mount Mitchell, commanding an extensive view of Sandy Hook and the busy waterways of the most opulent harbor in the world.

One of these friends was Samuel Rawson Sandyford, president of the Allied Potteries of Philadelphia; the other was Dr. Victor Lansing, senior minister of St. Barnabas’s, Brooklyn. Catching sight of the four funnels of the Mauretania passing far off on her stately way, Masson was reminded of his own last voyage, and something moved him to tell the story of Golden Spring and Lady Silcot’s defense of her husband.

‘Well, Mr. Masson,’ said President Sandyford, with drawling but emphatic enunciation, ‘I don’t confess to being perverted by Lady Silcot’s sob stuff. She must know in her heart what you and I might not venture to say to her face — that her husband was a determined villain, though he failed to commit any great villainy, through no fault of his. If you had had a chance of winning those three men to the side of right, and honor, and goodness, you might have succeeded with Fowler, who gave some sign of having a conscience, and you could have certainly captured Blumton with a judicious employment of Hell — but there, you good ministers are shy of the brimstone argument nowadays. Silcot — I know the breed — would have made light of all your church candies and all your spiritual horsewhips.’

But, to Masson’s astonishment, Dr. Lansing took a different view.

’I think, President,’ he said, ‘you put too much weight on the one wrong dominating choice of aim which Silcot made at the outset of his career. Before I would call him a determined villain, I should like to ascertain whether in matters unconnected with that aim he was given to deceit or theft or cruelty, and how far he managed to win and retain the trust or affection or respect of his clients and subordinates, of his closest intimates, and of the public generally. Meantime, I cannot withhold my admiration of the man’s courage. Think of the risks he ran — the liability to exposure, the possible treachery of his confederates, the prosecution, the heavy sentence, the lifelong disgrace. He laid his plans, took the main burden on himself, sheltered behind no innocent agent, held to his purpose through those months of waiting with a nerve of steel, and all with no apparent escape from an explosion of investors’ wrath and a racketing investigation. How could he stick it? I tell you, I call it magnificent. You think me quite wrong, do you? Well, what do you say to Browning?

‘Browning, Doctor,’ interrupted Sandyford, ‘yes, perhaps — but how about Scripture?’

‘I thought that challenge was coming,’ rejoined the Doctor, with a smile. ‘Well, I seem to remember a story of a dishonest steward, who for a certain line of action was held up to admiration by a very great Authority. Something very fine may be found in a bad man. And as to Silcot’s line of action, read over the eleventh of Hebrews, and consider whether that element of discernment and forceful, unconquerable courage there glorified was not evident in him. Apart from the one wrong indefensible choice of purpose with which he started, I should say Silcot was not far from the kingdom of God.’

‘And about the other two men, Doctor?’ asked Masson.

‘About the other two, Mr. Masson,’ replied Dr. Lansing, ‘I should say this. Probably you have found in Scotland what I have found in New York. Our churches are cursed with Blumtons and Fowlers. To use friend Sandyford’s language, we have thousands of people living most decorously because they smelled brimstone. These people would sin in certain ways and enjoy it, and the one real reason that prevents them is that they are afraid. The horror is that they imagine their decorous cowardice is Christianity.

‘As for the Fowlers — well, there’s a touch of Fowler in us all. Obey conscience and Christ as long as it pays. When your skin or your pocket or your pride is hurt, deny the good, deny the truth, and revile God. Is n’t it contemptible?

‘And the Church and the nation and the world are all in such need of men who can bear to be hurt and are not to be cowed by any hurt, burning for achievement and service. Give me a converted Silcot, say I.’

The talk then diverged to other regions. Mr. Masson, on returning to Scotland, made a careful study of Browning’s ‘Statue and the Bust’ and the eleventh of Hebrews. Even now he is not sure whether Dr. Lansing was right.