I am writing you from St. Vincent's Hospital in San Francisco. A
business trip that brought me here laid me flat with typhoid, and all my
money, what remained for the return trip to Kobe, is gone.
I ask you to do me the great favor of advancing me three hundred
dollars. I shall be out of hospital in a week or ten days at most and I
want to return at once. Immediately I get back to Kobe I shall send you
a draft in repayment. You must do this for me, Randolph, as I have no
one else to turn to. Unless I can get back I am stranded and my only
alternative will be to beat my way back to New York, which is the last
thing I want to do. Please let me hear from you by wire that you'll do
this.
Faithfully,
JIM PENDLETON.
The impudent blackmailing scoundrel! His only alternative will be New
York. That is his threat, and as a threat he means it. Yet I would
send him the money willingly if only I were sure that he would really
use it for passage to Kobe or to the devil--so long as it is far enough
away. But what security have I?
Nevertheless it comes to me sadly that I shall have to take the risk and
send him the money. To have Pendleton in New York again--at any cost I
must take any chance to prevent that. And arrant blackmailer that he
is, he understands that!
What could he do if he were here? The children? Though all minors, the
two eldest are old enough to choose and I believe I am secure in my
feelings as to their choice. He will not, moreover, be charging himself
with the responsibility of the children, if only I seem indifferent
enough as to whether he takes them or not. Alicia he is powerless to
touch. Oh, I have learned something of the weapons needed to fight such
a beast. But it is his hateful presence that I cannot stomach the
thought of. And that he knows also. I must send him the money and take
the chance that he will really return to his accustomed lairs. It will
be an uneasy time for a while, nevertheless. But too much ease would
now sit queerly upon my shoulders.