“If you can't deliver the goods, Mrs. Kilgour, I shall take a hand in it.”
“How?”
“I'll tell her the story.”
“You wouldn't dare.”
“She has a sense of honor and of obligation even if you haven't. She will pay. She'll pay with herself. That's a devil of a way to get a wife, but if that's the only way I'll take it.”
“But you have just owned up that you have embezzled money. As Kate's mother it's my duty to protect her from disgrace.”
That amazing declaration fairly took away Dodd's breath.
By the manner in which the woman now looked at him it was plain that he had sunk in her estimation.
“You know, Richard, a mother feels called on to protect a good daughter.”
He got up and stamped on the floor in his passion and swore.
“I appreciate what you did for me--but, really, I didn't ask you to steal money--and I supposed your uncle was always liberal with you. You should not have told me falsehoods.”
The maddening feature of this calm assumption of superiority was the fact that the woman seemed really to believe for the moment exactly what she was saying and to forget why Dodd had jeopardized his fortunes; her manner showed her shallow estimate of the situation.
“There's another way of doing it,” raged the young man, infuriated by this repudiation of obligation. “I'll blow the whole thing about the two of us--and she'll be glad enough to have me after it's all over.”
“You haven't any right to bring all this trouble and disgrace into my family.”
“You know one way of preventing it and you'd better get busy, Mrs. Kilgour,” he advised. “I'm going to give you another chance of keeping your word and paying your debt to me. I want Kate--and I have waited for her long enough.”
He clapped on his hat and hurried away.
He left the mother sprawled on a couch, her ringed hands clutched into her dyed hair. She was still clucking sobs which would not have convinced any unprejudiced hearer that she felt real grief.
When Richard Dodd entered his uncle's offices in the First National block a little later he was in the mood to force his affairs a bit. He enjoyed liberties there which the ordinary caller did not have and he walked into Kate Kilgour's little room without attracting attention or comment.
“I know exactly how you feel about last night, Kate.” He addressed her respectfully and humbly. “I understand that this is no place to discuss the matter. I haven't come here to do so. I apologize for the affair. I'm going to say this to you--I took your mother's advice. She planned the thing and trumped up the errand which called you to that house. I'm afraid she is rather too romantic. I only say this, Kate: a man's love can make him do foolish things. Please talk with your mother when you go home--and take her advice. If you do, it will be better for all of us.” He trembled with the restraint he had put upon himself. “You can see that I have been punished, Kate. I am a different man--you ought to be able to see it. Awful trouble has come to me. I need your love to help me through it.”
She gazed at him with level, cold eyes.
“You don't understand. I can't explain, dear! But I'm telling you the truth. Kate, if you don't forget that folly I was guilty of last night and be to me what you have been--if you don't marry me very soon you will be sorry.”
“Are you threatening me, Richard?”
“No, I didn't mean it to sound like that. But I know that with your appreciation of what sacrifice means you will be very unhappy if you toss me away and then find out certain things.”
“This is not the time for riddles, Richard. What do you mean?”
“I have said all I can say.”
“I do not love you well enough to be your wife. I have not meant to play the coquette. I have not known myself. You and my mother--Oh, why rehearse? You know the story. You have understood that my love for you was not what you should have. We may as well end it here and now, Richard. I will forget last night. I will forget all the rest--for it is ended!”
“It cannot be ended,” he retorted. “Understand! It cannot be ended. I am trying to hold myself together, Kate. Don't provoke me. I call on you to keep your promise. No other man shall have you.” He leaned close. “Do you love any other man?”
She looked up at him and spoke slowly and gravely. “I do not think I do, Richard.”
He scowled at her. “You don't _think_ you do! What in the name of Judas do you mean by a remark like that?”
“It's because I'm trying to tell the truth,” she returned, with simple earnestness.
“This is a sort of new mood you're in?” he persisted.
“Yes.”
He hesitated. He started to speak and then was silent for a long time. “Damnation! I won't insult you!” he blurted at last.
“I hope not, Richard.”
“It's preposterous!”
“What is preposterous?” Her tone was calm.
“I saw you look at a man last evening.”
“Very well!”
“I have seen women look at me like that in my life.”
“I was not conscious that I looked at any man in any especial manner.”
“You couldn't see yourself. Perhaps you did not realize that you looked at that man with any meaning in your eyes. But the women who looked at me as you looked at him told me that they loved me. I am talking it right out! But if I should hint that you're in love with a tramp I should insult you. I am crazy, that's all. My troubles are affecting my mind. Forgive me, Kate.”
“You are, of course, referring to the young man who broke in on our prospective business last evening.” There was just a touch of contempt in her demeanor; but her air was coldly business-like; sitting there at her desk she held him, physically and mentally, at arm's-length. Her poise was sure. It seemed perfectly natural for her to be discussing a young man in an impersonal manner.
“I am referring to that low-lived vagrant we met on the road--that iceman--that--well, I don't know what he is except that the devil seems to be kicking him under my feet to trip me. Kate, Kate, it's too ridiculous to talk about--that wretch!”
“Do you mean by that remark that I am taking any interest in that young man outside of mere curiosity?”
“I don't know why you should have any curiosity about a tramp.”
“You are not a good student of physiognomy, Richard.”
“So you have been studying him, have you? You went away with him and left me. What did he say to you? Where did he leave you? I haven't dared to think about your going away with him. I excused it because you were angry--so angry you'd even pick up a tramp for an escort. But what interest do you take in that renegade?” His tones were acrid with jealousy.
“I did not find him a renegade. I found him a mystery, Richard. And I hope that some day I will know what the mystery is.”
“Are you trying to drive me mad?”
“I am merely chatting along in order to keep you off a topic which is distressing. I heard that your uncle intended to have the man investigated after he came into the office here and made that brave stand. I happened to hear the talk the young man made. Perhaps that accounts for my curiosity. Did your uncle find out much about the man?”
“I don't know what he found out,” declared Dodd, rapidly losing control of himself. “But I propose to find out for myself.”
“Please do, Richard,” said the girl, ingenuously and earnestly. She seemed to be losing some of the hauteur she had shown at the first of their meeting.
“I'll find out enough to put him in jail, where he probably belongs. I'm not going to insult you, Kate, by any more talk about a tramp. You can't shift me from the main topic. Go home and talk with your mother, as I have told you. We are going to be married!”
“Richard, our affair is ended.”
“Then who is the man?”
“There is no man.”
“If you say that and mean it, then you don't know women as well as I know them. You don't know even yourself!” he declared. “I want to say to you, Kate, that we are all walking on mighty thin ice. The sooner you and I take hold of hands and get safely ashore--just you and I--the better it will be. Just let your curiosity about other men fall asleep. I tell you again, go home and talk with your mother.”
He bowed, reached his hand to touch hers, but refrained when she turned suddenly to her desk and resumed her work.
Young Dodd hurried out of the building without attempting to see his uncle, and cooled his head and his passion and soothed his physical discomfort by a headlong dash in his car back to the state's capital city.
The girl took her courage in her hands and asked Mr. Peter Briggs, in as matter-of-fact tone as she could muster, whether he did not want any record copy made of his notes in regard to that person who had bearded Colonel Dodd. But Mr. Briggs informed her that the matter was not of sufficient importance.
“The fellow is merely a cheap, loafing sort--here to-day, there to-morrow,” said Briggs. “I investigated him thoroughly.”
Until then Miss Kilgour had always had a high opinion of Peter Briggs's acumen. She promptly revised that estimate, reflecting that age is bound to dull a person's senses and cloud his judgment.
XXI
THE HONORABLE LION CONFERS WITH COLONEL TIGER
All his people in the offices of the Honorable Archer Converse noticed that the chief was not amiable that day. His usual dignified composure was wholly lacking. He gave off orders fretfully, he slapped papers about on his desk when he worked there; every now and then he glanced up at the portrait of his distinguished father and muttered under his breath. He had called for more documents relating to state health statistics, reports on water systems, and had despatched a clerk to the capital city to secure certain additional facts, figures, and literature. The junior members of his law firm knew that he had taken much to heart the case of the citizens of Danburg, who had been blocked in their honest efforts to build a water system and who now charged various high interests with conspiracy. The litigation was important--the issues revolutionary. But the juniors had never seen the chief fussed up by any law case before.