"I thought not," she went on smoothly. "With some women, perhaps with
most women, it wouldn't make any great difference, one way or the
other. So far as anybody out here knows to the contrary, you are a
free man--and a rich one; and so long as you haven't committed bigamy
or something of that sort, the average girl wouldn't care the snap of
her finger. Up to a few days ago I thought the brown-eyed little thing
you brought up here one night last fall to the theater was the average
girl. But now I know better."
It had always seemed a sheer sacrilege to even mention Mary Everton in
Agatha Geddis's presence. But this time I broke over.
"You know who she is?" I queried.
"I do now. And I know her _metier_ even better than you do, Bertie,
dear. She might go to her grave loving you to distraction, but she
would never have an ex-convict for the father of her children--not if
she knew it. It's in the Everton blood. Anybody who knew Phineas
Everton as you and I did in the old school-days, ought to know exactly
what to expect of his daughter."
I sat up quickly, and the lights in the high-swung drawing-room
chandelier began to turn red for me.
"You devil! Do you mean to say that you would tell Polly Everton?" I
burst out savagely.
"I'm not going to tell her because you are not going to drive me to
it,"--this with a half-stifled yawn behind a faultless white hand that
was just beginning to show the blue veining of bad hours and
dissipation. Then: "Go back to your hotel and go to bed, Bertie.
You'll wake up in a better frame of mind a few hours later, perhaps.
Kiss me, and say good-night."
As I have confessed, I carried a gun in those days; had carried one
ever since that memorable afternoon when I had dropped from the
trolley-car in Cripple Creek to preface the opening of our business
office by going first to a hardware shop for the purchase of a weapon.
After leaving the Altberg house I dismissed the night-owl cab on the
north bank of the river and crossed the Platte on the viaduct afoot.
Half-way over I stopped to look down into the winter-dry bed of the
stream. There was one way out of the wretched labyrinth of shame and
double-dealing into which my weakness and cowardice had led me. The
weapon sagged heavily in my pocket as if it were a sentient thing
trying in some dumb fashion to make its presence felt.
It was but a gripping of the pistol and a quick pull at the trigger,
and I should be out of the labyrinth for good and all. I don't know
why I didn't do it; why I hadn't done it long before--or rather, I do
know. It was because, when the deciding moment came, I was always
confronted by a vivid and soul-harrowing flash-light picture of Polly
Everton's face as it would look when they should tell her.