A BAD PENNY TURNS UP
David found a keen pleasure in the business on which he was now engaged.
For four years he had talked to no one, and for a year he had talked to
but four or five. Now he was actively thrown among men of the
world--Jordon, the general agent of the New Jersey Home Company, his
assistants, and the attorneys of the company. He instinctively measured
himself beside them, and he exulted, for though they were the shrewder
in business, he felt himself bigger, broader, than they.
The deal progressed hopefully. David discovered the five owners in
Rogers's syndicate to be five ordinary men, with no particular business
courage and no courage of any other kind, and whose interest in their
own welfare was their only interest in life. However, they had
confidence in Rogers's success, and stood solidly behind him--which was
all that could be desired of them. From his first meeting with Jordon,
David, too, was confident of success. Jordon held off, talked about
preposterous prices--but David felt surrender beneath the grand air with
which the general agent brushed Rogers's proposition aside. The company
had to have the land, so it had to meet Rogers's terms. And after each
subsequent meeting David felt that much nearer the day of surrender.
One morning, two weeks after he had entered upon his new duties, he was
looking through some papers in the living-room relating to the land,
when Kate knocked and entered.
"There's a woman out there wants to see you," she said, with a sharp
glance.
"What's she want?"
"She wouldn't tell me. She said you'd see her all right--she was an old
friend. If she is, I think some of your friends had better sign the
pledge!"
David followed Kate into the office. A tall woman rose from his chair
and smiled at him. It was Lillian Drew. The life went out of him. He
stood with one hand against the door jamb and stared at her.
When he had seen her five years ago she had had grace, and lines, and a
hardened sort of beauty--and she had worn silks and diamonds. Now the
face was flushed, and coarsened, and lined with wrinkles--the hands were
gemless, the hair carelessly done--and in place of the rich gown there
was an ill-fitting jacket and skirt. It was evident that for her the
last five years had been a dizzy incline.
"What a warm welcome!" she said, with a short laugh.
David did not answer her. Kate's quick eyes looked from one to the
other.
"Wouldn't you just as soon our talk should be private?" Lillian Drew
asked, with a smile of irony. "You'd better run out for awhile, little
girl."
Kate glanced at her with instinctive hatred. Lillian Drew, whom the five
years had made more ready with vindictiveness, glared back. "Come, run
along, little girl!"
Kate turned to David. "You'd better leave us alone for a few minutes,"
he said with an effort.
Kate jerked on her hat, jabbed in the pins, marched by Lillian Drew with
"you old cat!" and passed out into the street.
"Well, now--what do you want?" David demanded.
"Oh, I've just come to return your call. May I sit down?--I'm tired."
And smiling her baiting smile she sank back into David's chair.
David crossed to his desk and looked harshly down upon her. "How did you
find me?"
"Surely you thought I'd look you up when I got back to town! I asked at
the Mission. A girl in the office there wrote your address down on a
card for me. And told me a few things." She narrowed her eyes--almost
all their once remarkable brilliance was gone. "A few things, mister."
"Please say at once what you want," he asked, trying to speak with
restraint.
"Just to see an old acquaintance."
"Come to the point!" he said sharply.
"Well, then--I'm broke."
"I don't see why that brings you to me."
"Because you're going to give me money--that's why."
"I certainly will not!"
"Oh, yes, you will--when I get through with you. You wouldn't want me
to tell all I know of Phil Morton, now would you?"
"Tell if you want to." Anger at her as the cause of his five hard years
was rising rapidly. He pointed savagely to a mirror that Kate had put up
behind the door. "Look at yourself. Who'll believe your word?"
"But I won't ask 'em to believe my word," she said softly, her eyes
gleaming triumph at him.
Her words and manner startled him. "What do you mean?"
"Why, I'll show the letters, of course."
"Letters! What letters?"
"Morton's letters."
"Morton's letters!" He stared at her. "You gave them to me."
"Part of them." She laughed quietly, and ran the tip of her tongue
between her lips. "Oh, you were easy!"
David choked back an impulse to lay vengeful hands upon her. "You're
lying!" he said fiercely.
"Oh, I am, am I?"
She slipped a hand into the pocket of her skirt, paused in the action,
and her baiting smile turned to a look of threat. "If you try to grab
them, if you make a move toward me, I'll scream, people will rush in
here, and the whole thing will come out at once! You understand?"
The tormenting smile returned, and she slowly drew from her skirt a
packet of yellow letters held together by an elastic band. She removed
the band, drew one sheet from its envelope, and held it up before
David's eyes.
"You needn't bother about reading it. You've read one bunch--and
they're all alike. But look at the handwriting. I guess you know that,
don't you? And look at the signature: 'Always with love--Phil.' That's
one letter--there are fourteen more. And look at this photograph of the
two of us together, taken while he was in Harvard. And look at this
letter written five years ago, saying he'd send me five hundred the next
day--and at this letter, written two days before he died, saying he
hadn't another cent and couldn't get it. I guess you're satisfied."
She coolly snapped the band over the bundle and returned the letters to
her pocket. "I guess I'll get some money, won't I?"
"I see," David remarked steadily, "that I must again call your attention
to the fact that there are such things as laws against blackmailing."
She looked at him, amusedly. "That worked once--but it won't work twice.
Arrest me for blackmail, and there'll be a trial, and at it the truth
about Morton will come out. You told me five years ago you didn't care
if the truth did come out--but I know a lot better now!" She laughed.
"Please send for a policeman!"
He was helpless, and his face showed it.
"Oh, I've got you! But don't take it so hard. You scared me out of
town--but I've got nothing against you. I really like you; I'm sorry
it's you I'm troubling. I've got to have money--that's all."
There was an instant of faint regret in her face--but only an instant.
"Yes, I've got you. But I haven't showed you all my cards yet. Mebbe
you'll tell me you won't pay anything to keep me still about Phil
Morton, who's been dead for five years. All right. But you'll pay me to
keep still about yourself."
David looked at her blankly.
"You don't understand? I'll talk plainer then. I've been doing a little
putting one and one together. You didn't take that five thousand dollars
from the Mission. Phil Morton didn't have a cent of his own--he told me
that when he was half crazy with trying to beg off; he said I was
driving him into crime. He took that money, and I got it. Well, for some
reason, I don't know why, you said you took it, and went to prison."
Wonderment succeeded to hardness and sarcasm. "You're a queer fellow,"
she said slowly. "Why did you do it?"
"Go on!"
"I don't understand it--you're a queer lot!--but I know you've got your
reason for wanting to make the world think it was you that took the
money and not Phil Morton. And I know it's a mighty strong reason,
too--strong enough to make you willing to go to prison and to keep still
while people are calling you thief. Well--and here's my ace of trumps,
mister--if you don't hand out the cash I'll tell that _you didn't take
the money_!"
David sank slowly into Kate Morgan's chair, and gazed stunned at the
woman, whose look grew more and more triumphant as she noted the effect
of her card. His mind comprehended her threat only by degrees, but at
length the threat's significance was plain to him.
If he didn't pay her, she would clear his name, He must pay her money to
retain his guilt.
"I guess I'll get the money--don't you think?" she asked.
He did not answer. Temptation closed round him. Temptation coming in its
present form would have been stronger in his darker days, but even now
it was mighty in its strength. Why should he bear his disgrace longer?
This woman could clear him; would clear him, if he did not pay. And he
had no money--almost none. He had merely to say "no"--that was all.
In these first dazed moments he really did not know which was the voice
of temptation and which the voice of right. One voice said, "To refuse
will be to destroy hundreds of people." And the other voice said, "To
pay blackmail is wrong." Desire took advantage of this moral
disagreement to order his reply.
"I shall not pay you a cent!"
"Oh, yes you will," she returned confidently.
"I shall not!--not a cent!" he said, with wild exultation.
"You know what'll happen if you don't?"
"Yes. You'll tell. All right--tell!"
She studied his flushed face and excited eyes. "You're in earnest?"
"Don't I look it! I shall not pay you a cent! Understand? Not a cent!"
He had risen, and she too now rose. "Oh, you'll pay something," she said
with a note of coaxing. "I'm not as high as I once was. Fifty dollars
would help me a lot."
"Not a cent!"
"Twenty-five?"
"Not a cent, I said."
"Well, you'll wish you had!" she said vindictively, and turned and
walked out of the office.
He dropped back into his chair. So he was going to be righted before the
world!--at last! Vivid, thrilling dreams flashed through his
brain--dreams of honour, of success, of love!... Then, slowly, his mind
began to clear; he began to see the other results of Lillian Drew's
disclosure. His five years would have been uselessly spent--lost. And
the people of the Mission--Quick visions pictured the consequence to
them.
He sprang up, holding fast to just one idea among all that confused his
brain. He must stick to his old plan; the people must keep Morton. He
must find Lillian Drew and silence her. But where find her? He had not
asked her address, he had not even watched which direction she had gone.
Perhaps even now she might be telling someone.
He seized his hat, and hurried from the room. As he came out upon the
sidewalk, a tall woman who had been standing across the street, started
over to meet him. At sight of her he stopped, and gave a great sigh of
relief.
"You're looking for me, aren't you?" she asked, when she had come up.
"Yes."
"I knew you'd be changing your mind, so I waited," she said with a smile
of triumph. "I knew you'd pay!"