"This is what I want. Four years ago you and your father sent me to
prison for a crime that I didn't commit. Go over to that table and
write and sign me my clearance--tell the bald truth and sign your name
to it--and you shall have your money."
In a flash she slipped from her place on the arm of the chair and stood
before me transformed into a flaming incarnation of vindictive rage.
In spite of the pace she had been keeping she was still very beautiful,
and her anger served to heighten that physical charm which was the
keynote of her power over men.
"_Oh_!" she panted; "so _that_ was what you were willing to pay for!
You want a bill of health so you can go back to that little hussy in
Cripple Creek! Listen to me, Bert Weyburn: you've broken the last
thread. I could kill you if you couldn't serve my turn better alive
than dead! _I want that money_. If you don't bring it here to me by
ten o'clock, the Denver police are going to find out that you, the
wealthy third partner in the Little Clean-Up, are the man they
photographed nearly a year ago, the man whose thumb-print they took,
the man who is wanted as an escaped convict who has broken his
parole--No, don't speak; let me finish. For the money you are going to
bring me, I'll keep still--to the police. But for the slap you've just
given me. . . . Did you ever read that line of Congreve's about a
woman scorned? You've had your last little love-scene with Polly
Everton!"
I'll tell it all. This time the murder demon proved too strong for me.
It was a sheer madman who sprang at her out of the depths of the
arm-chair and bent her back over the little oak writing-table with his
hands at her throat. She was not womanly enough to scream; instead,
she fought silently and with the strength and cunning of mortal fear.
Even as my fingers clutched at her for the strangling hold she twisted
herself free and put the breadth of the table between us; then I found
myself looking into the muzzle of a small silver-mounted revolver.
"You fool!" she gasped. "Do you think I would take any chances with
you? If you should kill me, the axe would fall and find your neck,
just the same! I put it in a letter to the chief of police. Get me
that money before ten o'clock if you want me to stop the letter!"
I was beaten, this time not by fear of her or what she could do, but by
the crushing loss I had suffered in those few mad moments. I had done
the thing that no man may do and still claim that he has a single drop
of gentle blood in his veins; I had laid my hands in violence upon a
woman, and with murder in my heart.
Convinced now that there was no deeper depth of degradation to which I
could sink, I set about the task she had given me, laboring through it
like a man in a dream. To gather up such a huge sum of money after
banking hours was well nigh impossible; but I compassed the end by
chartering a cab and going to anybody and everybody who could by any
possibility cash my checks, leaving a disgraceful trail of the bank
paper in dives and gambling dens and night resorts without
number--driven to this because all respectable sources were closed at
that time in the evening.
Returning to the hotel only a few minutes before the critical hour, I
went directly to her rooms, carrying the money in a small hand-bag that
I had bought for the purpose. I found her waiting for me, gowned and
hatted as if for a journey. She was standing before a mirror, dabbing
her neck with a powder-puff--histronic to the last; she was showing me
how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I
have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman
of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late
volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a
sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief of police.
"You got the money?" she said quietly. "I knew you would." And then
with a sudden passion: "Oh, Bertie! if you weren't such a cold-blooded
fish of a man!--but never mind; it's too late now."
I placed the small hand-bag on the table, pocketed the fateful letter,
and backed toward the door. "If there is nothing else," I said.
"Oh, but there is!" she put in quickly. "I want you to get a cab and
take me to the station. I'm leaving for California. Don't you want to
go with me?"
"God forbid!" I exclaimed, and it came out of a full heart. Then I
went down to order the cab.
She was curiously silent on the short drive down Seventeenth Street to
the Union Station, sitting with the little hand-bag on her knees and
breathing as they say the Australian pearl fishers breathe before
taking the deep-sea dive. In the station she stood at a window in the
women's room and waited while I purchased her ticket for San Francisco
and paid for the sleeper section which had evidently been reserved some
time in advance.
It is perhaps needless to say that I did not buy my own California
ticket at the same time, though the train she was taking was the one I
had planned to take. My journey could be postponed; and in the light
of what had happened, and what was now happening, I was beginning to
understand that my runaway trip to the Pacific Coast was no longer
necessary, on one account, at least. But in any event, wild horses
couldn't have dragged me aboard of the same train with Agatha Geddis.
She seemed strangely perturbed when I went to her with the tickets, and
she made no move to leave the window.
"Your train is ready," I told her, as she thrust the ticket envelope
into the bosom of her gown.
"Wait!" she commanded; then she turned back to the window which looked
out upon the cab rank.
There were cabs coming and going constantly, and I didn't know until
afterward what she saw that made her eyes light up and the blood surge
into her cheeks.
"Now I'm ready," she announced quickly. "Put me on the sleeper."
I took her through the gates and at the gate-man's halting of us I saw
that we were followed.
Our shadow was an alert, dapper young man who wore glasses, and I
remembered having seen him, both at the ticket window and in the
women's room. Outside of the gates he confirmed my suspicion by
trailing us to the steps of the sleeping-car.
Even then I didn't suspect what was going on. While the sleeping-car
conductor was examining the tickets and taking the section number I saw
the young man with the spectacles making a hurried reconnaissance of
the car by walking back and forth beside it and peering curiously in
through the lighted windows. Then I missed him for a minute or two
until he came running from the gates with a railroad ticket in his hand.
"I'm going to Cheyenne, and I want a berth in this car," he told the
Pullman conductor, "They said they couldn't sell me one at the
office--that you had the diagram."
The conductor looked over his list. "Nothing doing," he returned.
"All sold out."
"That's all right," snapped the young man; "I'll take my chance sitting
up." With that, he climbed aboard and disappeared in the car.
All this time we had been waiting for the conductor to return my
companion's tickets. When he did so, I helped her up the steps. The
air-brakes were sighing the starting signal, and she turned in the
lighted vestibule and blew me a kiss.
"Good-by, Bertie, dear," I heard her say. "Be a good boy, and give my
love to Little Brown-Eyes." Then, as if to prove the immortal saying
that there is no such thing as ultimate total depravity in the human
atom, she leaned over to whisper the parting word: "Make good with her
if you can, and want to, Bertie: I didn't mean it when I said I'd spoil
your chances. Good-night and good-by." And with that the train moved
off and she was gone.
I slept late in my room at the hotel the next morning, waking with a
vague sense of inexpressible relief, which was quickly followed by the
emotions which may come to a man regaining consciousness after he has
been sandbagged and robbed. At table in the breakfast-room the boy
brought me a morning paper. On the first page, in screaming headlines,
I saw the complete explanation of the mysteries of the previous
evening. Agatha Geddis had eloped with a married man notably prominent
in social and business circles. The newspaper had two reliable sources
of information. The deserted wife had been interviewed, and the guilty
pair had been followed on the train by a reporter.
I laid the paper aside and stared out of the breakfast-room window like
a man awakening from a horrid dream. Once again the submerging wave of
realization and relief rushed over me. Truly, I had been held up and
robbed; had in fact innocently financed this city-shaking elopement.
But, so far as Agatha Geddis's banishment from Denver and Colorado
could accomplish it, I was once more a free man.