XXIV
Restoration
At the clanging of the cell door behind the departing lawyer I was to allintents and purposes a broken reed. The theorists may say what theyplease about the fine and courageous quality of resolution which risesonly the higher the harder it is beaten down; but man is human, and thereare limits beyond which the finest resiliency becomes dead and brittleand there is no rebound.
The temptation to yield was both subtle and compelling. Reason, the kindof reason which scoffs at ideals, told me that I was foolish to fight fora principle. On the one hand there were sharp misery, the loss offreedom, poverty and suffering for Polly: on the other, liberty and agenerous degree of affluence. We could hide ourselves, Polly and I, insome remote corner of the world where no one knew; and our share of thefive millions, wealth even as wealth is reckoned in the day of wealth,would put us far enough beyond the reach of want; nay, it would domore--it would silence the gossiping tongues if there were any to wag.
Up and down the narrow limits of my cell I paced, praying at one momentfor strength to hold out to the end, and at the next cursing myself foran idiotic splitter of hairs helpless to break away from the manaclingsof an idea. Love, reason, common sense were all ranged on the side ofthe compromise with principle; and opposed to them there was only thestubborn protest against injustice pleading feebly and despairingly forits final hearing.
In the midst of the struggle the kitchen "trusty" brought the mid-daymeal, and for the first time in forty-eight hours I forced myself to eat.A sound body, weakened only by anxiety and abstinence, is quick torespond to a resumption of the normal. Under the food stimulus I feltbetter, stronger. But now the strength was all on the side of yielding.With the quickening pulses came the keen lust of life. To live, to befree, to enjoy, in the years, few or many, of the little earthly span:after all, these were the only realities.
Whitredge had left his fountain pen, and the papers--the letter toBarrett and Gifford and the petition--were lying on the cot where I hadthrown them. For the last time I put the pleading protest under foot.Freedom, a fortune, and Polly's happiness: the triple bribe was too greatand I uncapped the pen.
It was at this precise moment that footsteps in the corridor warned methat someone was coming. A bit of the old convict secretiveness made mehastily thrust the papers out of sight under the cot blankets, and at therattling of the key in the lock I stood up to confront--Whitredge.
"You?" I said. "I thought you were going to give me until to-morrowmorning."
He looked strangely perturbed, and the nervousness was also in his voicewhen he said: "I meant to, Bert, but I've had a wire, and I've got to goback to Glendale on this next train"--dragging his watch out of itspocket and glancing at it hurriedly. "Those papers: you've had timeenough to think things over, and I'm sure you've made up your mind to dothe sensible thing. Let me have them so I can set things in motionbefore I leave town."
I wondered why he kept jerking his head around to look over his shoulderas he talked, and why the turnkey jingled his keys and waited. But thetime for indecision on my part was past and I reached under the blanketfor the two papers. With the three-legged stool for a writing-table Iwas kneeling to put my name at the bottom of the letter to my partnerswhen there were more footsteps in the corridor, hurried ones, this time,and I looked up to see the squarely built, competent figure of ourWestern lawyer, Benedict, standing in the cell doorway, with the deputywarden, Cummings, backgrounding him.
"Hello, Whitredge; at your old tricks, are you?" snapped the new-comerbrusquely. And then to me: "What are you signing there, Bertrand?"
"Nothing, now--without your advice," I said, getting up and handing himthe letter.
Whitredge couldn't get out, with Benedict filling the doorway, so he hadto stand a cringing second prisoner, looking this way and that, like arat searching for a hole, while the big Westerner read calmly through theletter which had been written out for me. That moment amply repaid mefor much that I had suffered at the hands of Cyrus Whitredge.
"Humph!" said Benedict, folding the letter and thrusting it into hispocket. "Now what's that other document?"
I gave him the petition for pardon, and again he took his time with thereading.
"Nice little scheme you were trying to pull off!" he said to Whitredge,after the petition, accurately refolded, had gone to join the pocketedletter. "You are certainly an ornament to an honorable profession."Then, stepping into the cell and standing aside: "You may go. We'll knowwhere to find you when you're needed."
Whitredge's vanishing was like a trick of legerdemain; one moment hestood before us, and at the next he was gone. At his going, Cummings andthe turnkey also disappeared and I was left alone with Benedict. Therewas a hearty handgrasp to assure me that I was not dreaming, and then Isaid:
"I had given you up, Benedict. I thought they had you tied hand and footback yonder in the big hills."
"Myers is handling that end of it," he returned. "I had other irons inthe fire, and they've been getting hot in such rapid succession that Icouldn't leave them. But I did what I could by wire--got the warden'spromise that he would hold your case 'in suspension' until I could showup in person. Have they been treating you well? I'm afraid theyhaven't. You're not looking quite up to the mark."
I was beginning to understand--a little.
"When did you telegraph the warden?" I asked.
"Immediately; from Cripple Creek, and as soon as Barrett had told me yourstory. We had our reply at once, and I took the first train forGlendale, your old home town. What I have been able to dig up in thatlittle dead-alive burg is a great plenty, Bertrand. Your arrest hasturned out to be just about the most unfortunate thing that couldpossibly have happened for certain persons who were most anxious to bringit to pass--namely, two old rascals who made use of the traveling-manBarton's story and started the pursuit in the right direction."
"Call me Weyburn," I broke in. "That is my name--James BertrandWeyburn--and I'm going to wear it, all of it, from this time on."
"I know," laughed the big attorney, drawing up the stool and seatinghimself beside the cot much as Whitredge had done at an earlier hour ofthe same day. "They call you 'Bert' and 'Herbert' down yonder in yourhome village, and they don't seem to know that your middle name isBertrand."
"You say you have been digging: what did you find out?" I questionedeagerly.
"Some things that I was looking for and some that I wasn't. I had theadvantage of being a total stranger to everybody, and all I had to do wasto stroll around and ask questions. Let me ask you one, right now; doyou know who the owners of the Lawrenceburg are?"
"A New York syndicate, I've always understood."
"Not in a thousand years!" retorted the lawyer, laughing again. "It isowned, pretty nearly in fee simple, by two old friends of yours--AbelGeddis and Abner Withers. More than that, it is a reorganized andrenamed corporation founded upon a certain gold-brick proposition, called'The Great Oro Mining and Reduction Company,' promoted and floated downin your section of the State something like five years ago by two mennamed Hempstead and Lesherton. Does that stir up any old memories foryou?"
It did, indeed. "The Great Oro" was the mine for the capitalization ofwhich Abel Geddis had used the money belonging to his depositors; thebasis of the theft which had cost me three good years of my life.
"But I had understood that the 'Oro' was a fake, pure and simple!" Iprotested.
"It was. A claim had been located and a shaft sunk to ninety feet, butthere was no mineral. That shaft is the present main shaft of theLawrenceburg. After Geddis and Withers found they had been'gold-bricked' they went to Colorado and looked the ground over forthemselves. The result of that visit was a determination on their partto send a little good money after the bad, so they put a force in themine and began to drift from the shaft-bottom, and shortly after that theworkings began to pay."
"Which direction did that drift take?" I asked.
Benedict did
not answer the question directly. "Things began to fitthemselves together pretty rapidly after I got the facts in the historyof 'The Great Oro'," he went on. "By that time the news of your arrestand return to the penitentiary had reached Glendale and the gossip beeswere buzzing. Whitredge was rattling around like a pea in a driedbladder, holding midnight conferences in the bank with the two hoary oldvillains who had sworn your liberty away, starting a petition for yourpardon, and I don't know what all. I didn't pay much attention to himbecause I was at that time more deeply interested in a number of otherthings."
"Go on," I begged breathlessly.
"First, I investigated carefully the records of your trial and it didn'ttake very long to discover that Whitredge had doubled-crossed you. Hebribed the two deputies sent to transfer you from the police station inGlendale to the county seat. They were to bully and browbeat you intomaking an attempt to escape--thus affording proof presumptive of yourguilt--and this they proceeded to do. They've admitted it underoath--after I had shown them what we could do to them if they didn't."
"Whitredge began to plan for that very thing almost at the first," I putin. "It was he who put the idea of running way into my head."
"Sure he did. But speaking of affidavits, I have another; from a fellownamed Griggs; you remember him, of course,--your understudy in Geddis'sbank at the time when you were bookkeeper and cashier? He swears thatthe original stock certificates in 'The Great Oro' were made out in thename of Abel Geddis--as you know they were--and that on a certain nightjust previous to your arrest, when he had been working late and had goneto the back room for his hat and coat, Geddis and Whitredge came in andGeddis opened the vault. Are you paying attention?"
I was choking with impatience, as he well knew, but he refused to behurried.
"All in good time," he chuckled. "I'm coming to it by littles. Griggswas curious to know what was going on and he played the spy. He sawGeddis's name taken out of the stock certificates with an acid and yourname written in its place. You see, they were confidently counting upon'getting' you through Geddis's daughter and were framing things up tofit. How much or how little they took the young woman into theirconfidence I don't know."
"That doesn't matter now," I hastened to say.
"No; Griggs was the man I wanted, and I got him. He will testify incourt, if he is obliged to. He would have done it at the time if Geddisand Whitredge hadn't discovered him and scared him stiff with a threat toput him in the prisoner's dock with you, as an accomplice. After I hadsecured Griggs's affidavit I wanted one more thing, and I got it--boughtit. That was a map of the Lawrenceburg underground workings, correctedup to date. I knew Geddis and Withers must have one, and by a piece ofgreat good luck I found a young surveyor's clerk who had made a tracingfor Geddis from one of Blackwell's blue-prints. He had spoiled his firstattempt by spilling a bottle of ink on it, so he made another. He didn'tsee any reason why he shouldn't sell me the spoiled copy."
"I know what you are going to say!" I shouted.
"I imagine you do," he laughed. "The Lawrenceburg workings have nevergone downhill at all. They've been burrowing in the opposite directionall the time, and according to their own map they never touched pay-oreuntil they cut the Little Clean-Up vein below your hundred-and-fifty-footlevel. Now you know why they have been fighting us so desperately, andwhy, as a final resort, they are willing to pay us five million dollarsfor a quit-claim to the Little Clean-Up. We've got them by the neck,Jimmie. We can make them pay for every dollar's worth of ore they havestolen from us."
It was too big to be surrounded at the first attempt. I completely lostsight of my own involvement in the upflash of joy at the thought that atthe long last the two old scoundrels who had robbed others right and leftwere going to get what was coming to them. Benedict went on with hisstory quietly and circumstantially.
"I guessed at once what Whitredge was up to when I found that he wascirculating that pardon petition. He was aiming to make you aself-confessed criminal before we could have time to turn a wheel. Atthat, I wired a Cincinnati detective agency, and a young man who knew hisbusiness was put on the job. The detective's reports showed the wholething up. Geddis, Withers and Whitredge were hustling like mad to makecapital out of your recapture by the prison authorities. Whitredge wasto advise you to urge the sale of the Little Clean-Up upon Barrett andGifford, and your reward was to be a pardon, by the asking for which youwould be virtually confessing your guilt. Thus the past would be buriedbeyond any possibility of a resurrection. Nice little scheme, wasn't it?"
"You have those two papers--the letter and the petition," I said, with anuncontrollable shudder. "You'll never know how near Whitredge came towinning out. I was just about to sign when you came."
"Whitredge is a dangerous man," was Benedict's comment. "He took thetrain from Glendale last night, and the detective went with him, wiringme from a station up the line. I caught the next train and got here twohours ago. I might have headed him off of you, I suppose, but I had abit of legal business to attend to first. If you are ready, we'll go.Your wife is waiting for you in the warden's office, and she'll bewondering why we are so long about getting the doors unlocked."
"Go?" I stammered. "You--you mean that I'm free?"
"Sure you are! My legal business was to press the _habeas corpus_proceedings which were begun as soon as I had obtained evidence of themiscarriage of justice in your trial before Judge Haskins. You are afree man. I left the order of the court with the warden as I came in."
There is a limit to human endurance, either of sorrow or of joy. I gotup and tried to walk with Benedict to the cell door, which had been leftstanding open. I remember catching at the big lawyer's arm, and then theworld went black before my eyes. And that is all I do remember.
* * * * * *
We held our council of war--the final one in the long series--late in theevening of the day of climaxes in the sitting-room of a Hotel Buckinghamsuite, Benedict, Barrett and I. Barrett had arrived just as we weresitting down to dinner, having hurried east as soon as he could be sparedat Cripple Creek.
"They are all in, down and out," was Barrett's summing-up of thesituation, after he had heard Benedict's story. And then: "It's up toyou, Jimmy"--looking away from me. "You owe those two old men and theirscamp of a lawyer a pretty long score, and I guess you'll be wanting topay it."
"I do!" I gritted. In a flash all the injustice I had suffered at thehands of Abel Geddis and Abner Withers and Cyrus Whitredge piled in uponme and there was no room in my heart for anything but retaliation.
Benedict clipped and lighted a cigar, and Barrett sat back in his chairand stared at the gas-fixture in the center of the ceiling.
"I can't blame you much, Jimmie," he offered. "I guess maybe, if theshoe were on my foot, I'd want to give them the limit. And yet----"
"There isn't any 'and yet'," I cried out.
"Perhaps not; but I don't know, Jimmie. If I were going to be the fatherof Polly's children, as you are, I--well, I don't believe I'd care tohand down that sort of a legacy to the children; a legacy of hatred--evena just hatred--gorged and surfeited on the thumb-screwing of two old men.Whitredge will get what is coming to him; the Bar Association will see tothat. But these two old misers who are already tottering on the edge ofthe grave----"
"They have robbed me of my good name, and they have robbed us all of ourgood money!" I cut in rancorously.
At this, Benedict, who had been saying little, put in his word.
"I saw Whitredge an hour ago. He has been wiring Geddis and Withers--totell them that the game is up. He says he supposes he will have to takehis own medicine, but he asked me to intercede for the two old men. Theyhave wired their Colorado attorneys to withdraw the Lawrenceburg suit andto lift the injunction, and they offer to turn in all their property ifthey are permitted to leave the country. That's as bad as a prisonsentence for two men as old as they are. Will you let them do it, andcall the acc
ount square, Weyburn?"
"No, by God!" If I set down the very words that I uttered, it is only inthe interest of truth. At that moment I was like the soldiers who haveseen their dead; I had seen the look in Polly's eyes, put there by thathorrible week of waiting and suspense.
The room, as I have said, was the sitting-room of our suite--Polly's andmine--and I had neither seen nor heard the door of communication with thebed-room open. When I glanced up she was standing in the doorway, and Iknew that she had heard. In the turning of a leaf she had flown acrossthe room to drop on her knees beside me and bury her face in my lap.
"Oh, Jimmie--Jimmie, dear!" she sobbed; "you _must_ forgive--forgive andforget! For my sake--for your own sake--you must!"
That settled it. Benedict flung his freshly lighted cigar into the grateand turned away, and Barrett got up and crossed to the window. I stoodup and lifted my dear girl to her feet, and with her tear-stained facebetween my palms I turned my back upon the past and told her what we weregoing to do.
"It shall be as you say, Polly; we'll go back to the tall hills andforget it--and make other people forget it. And we'll let Mr. Benedict,here, do just what he pleases, no more and no less, with a pair of oldplotters who haven't so very many years to wait before they will have toturn in their score to the Great Evener."
At this Barrett jerked out his watch and broke in brusquely; and as atother times, the brusquerie was only a mask for the things that a mandoesn't wear on his sleeve.
"Cut it short, you two turtle-doves; you've got about forty-five minutesbefore the Westbound Limited is due, and you'd better be packing yourgrips. Come on downstairs, Benedict, and I'll buy you a drink to go withthat red necktie of yours. Let's go."
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