"It was in the newspapers, but I suppose they haven't let you see them
here. Your mine is shut down. You were operating as bonded lessees
under a temporary injunction, or something of that sort, weren't you?
Well, the Federal court has made the injunction permanent and tied you
up. As soon as I got this I smelled trouble for you, and as your
attorney in fact I got busy with the wires. The situation isn't half
as bad as it might be. I understand that the plaintiff company, a
corporation called the Lawrenceburg Mining & Reduction Company, has
offered you people five million dollars for a transfer of all rights
and titles under your holdings, and that, notwithstanding the
injunction, this offer still holds good."
Since it is a proverb that an empty stomach is a mighty poor team-mate
for a befogged brain, I was unable to see what Whitredge was driving
at, and I told him so.
"Nothing in particular," he countered, "except to remind you that you
still have a good chance to play safe. We are going to 'wrastle' you
out of here, just as I say, Bert, my boy, at any cost, and it's a piece
of great good luck that you won't have to count the pennies in whatever
it may cost."
"But I shall have to count them if our mine is shut down."
"Not if you and your partners make this sale to the Lawrenceburg
people. Five millions will give each of you a million and two-thirds
apiece. It's up to you right now to persuade your two partners to
close with the offer while it still holds good. It's liable to be
withdrawn any minute, you know. The other two may be able to hang on
and put up a further fight, but you can't afford to."
"Why can't I?"
"For one mighty good reason, if there isn't any other. I met your wife
this morning, Bert. She's stopping across town at the Buckingham--just
to be as near you as she can get. You can't afford to do, or to leave
undone, anything that'll keep that little woman dangling on the ragged
edge. She thinks too much of you."
He had me on the run, and I think he knew it. What he did not know was
that the smash, the solitary cell, and a weakened body were pushing me
harder than any of his specious arguments.
"I've got to get out!" I groaned, with the cold sweat starting out all
over me. "Whitredge, I've had enough in these few days to break an
iron man!"
"Naturally; married only a month, and all that. I'm a dried-up old
bachelor, Bert, my boy, but I know exactly how you feel. As you say,
you've got to get out of here, and the quickest way is the right
way--when you stop to think of that poor lonesome little woman waiting
over yonder in the hotel. I've come fixed for you"--he was on his
feet, now, fumbling in his pockets for some papers and a fountain
pen--"I've drawn up a letter to your two partners,--let me see; where
is it? Oh, yes, here you are--a letter from you advising them to close
with that Lawrenceburg offer. If you'll just authorize me to send a
wire in your name, and then read this letter that I've blocked out and
sign it----"
I glanced hastily over the type-written sheet he handed me. It was a
business-like letter addressed to Barrett and Gifford, going fully into
the situation from the point of view of a man needing ready money, and
urging the acceptance of the Lawrenceburg offer, not wholly for the
personal reason upon which Whitredge had been enlarging, but
emphatically as a prudent business measure--an alternative to the
possible loss of everything.
"You see just how the matter stands," he went on while I was reading
the letter. "They've got you stopped, and that is pretty good evidence
that the court is holding you as trespassers on Lawrenceburg property.
The next thing in order, if you fellows hold out, will be a suit for
damages which will gobble up all your former returns from the mine and
leave you without anything--you and both of your partners."
"What do you get out of it if this sale goes through, Whitredge?" I
asked him suddenly.
He laughed as if I had perpetrated a new joke.
"What do _I_ get out of it? Why, bless your innocent soul, Bert, ain't
I working for my fee? And I tell you I'm going to charge you a
rattling big one, too, when I can shake hands with you as a millionaire
and better on the sidewalk in front of this State eleemosynary
Institution!"
"You talk as if you had the sidewalk means in your hand," I said,
yielding a little to his enthusiasm in spite of my suspicions of him
and my feeble efforts to stand alone.
"I have!" he announced oracularly. "I have here"--slapping a second
folded paper which he had drawn from his pocket--"I have here a
petition for your free and unconditional pardon, addressed to the
Governor and signed by the trial judge, the prosecuting attorney, and
by ten of the twelve members of the jury. Oh, I tell you, young man,
I've been busy these last three days. You may have been setting me
down as a hard-hearted old lawyer, toughened to all these things, Bert,
but when I read that newspaper story, of how you were kidnapped, as you
may say--torn from the arms of a loving wife and dragged aboard of a
train and railroaded back to prison--every drop of blood in me rose up
in protest, and I swore then and there that if there was any such thing
as executive clemency in this broad land of ours, you should have it!"
If I had been wholly well and out of prison perhaps the cheap bombast
in all this would have been apparent at once. But I was neither well
nor free. And Polly's heart was breaking; I didn't need Whitredge's
word for this--I knew it by all the torments of inward conviction.
I understood well enough what he was asking me to do: to tip the scale
against what might be Barrett's and Gifford's better judgment, and to
sign a paper which would stamp me for all time as a criminal pleading,
not for justice, but for pardon. In spite of this knowledge the
pressure Whitredge had brought to bear was well-nigh irresistible.
Barrett and the Colorado lawyers evidently had their hands too full to
think of me; and, in any event, I could not see what possible chance
they might have of reopening my case and proving my innocence. At the
end of it I was reaching for the pen in Whitredge's hand, but at the
touch of the thing with which I was to sign away my fighting rights for
all time a little flicker of strength came.
"You must give me time, Whitredge; a little time to think this over," I
pleaded. "Four years and a half ago I told you I was innocent--I tell
you so again. You are asking me to confess that I was guilty; if I
sign that petition it will be a confession in fact. I have sworn a
thousand times that I'd rot right here inside of these walls before I'd
ask for a pardon for a crime that wasn't mine. Leave these papers and
let me think about it. Give me a chance to convince myself that there
is no other way!"
He looked at his watch, and if he were disappointed he was too well
schooled in his trade to show it.
"All right; just as you say," he agreed. "Shall we make it this
afternoon--say, some time after three o'clock?"
"Make it to-morrow morning," I begged.
This time he hesitated, again pulling out his watch and consulting its
face as if it were an oracle. I had no means of knowing--what I
learned later--that he was making a swift calculation upon the arriving
and departing hours of certain railroad trains. None the less, he
agreed somewhat reluctantly to the further postponement; but when the
turnkey was unlocking the door he gave me a final shot.
"I don't want to influence you one way or the other, Bert--that is, not
against your best interests; but while you're making up your mind don't
leave the little woman out. I shall see her at dinner to-night, and
she'll want to know what's what. I'm going to give her your love and
tell her you're trying mighty hard to be reasonable. Is that right?"