The "industry" which Graham had referred to could
mean only his own and Carl Lomen's, the reindeer industry which they had
built up and were fighting to perpetuate, and which Graham and his
beef-baron friends were combining to handicap and destroy. And in this
game of destruction clever Mary Standish had come to play a part!
_But why had she leaped into the sea?_
It was as if a new voice had made itself heard in Alan's brain, a voice
that rose insistently over a vast tumult of things, crying out against
his arguments and demanding order and reason in place of the mad
convictions that possessed him. If Mary Standish's mission was to pave
the way for his ruin, and if she was John Graham's agent sent for that
purpose, what reason could she have had for so dramatically attempting
to give the world the impression that she had ended her life at sea?
Surely such an act could in no way have been related with any plot which
she might have had against him! In building up this structure of her
defense he made no effort to sever her relationship with John Graham;
that, he knew, was impossible. The note, her actions, and many of the
things she had said were links inevitably associating her with his
enemy, but these same things, now that they came pressing one upon
another in his memory, gave to their collusion a new significance.
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