The Fifth Ace Part 22

"What is the matter, Vernon?" she asked abruptly. "You haven't been at all like yourself these last few days. We're pals, you know; tell me."

He glanced up, hastily shifted his eyes, and then blurted out desperately.

"If you'd ever been an absolute rotter and then got on to the fact when it was too late, I guess you wouldn't be very much like yourself, either.

I'm a confounded cad, Willa, and worse!" He dropped his head on his hands with a groan. "I ought to be shot!"

"Well, that's a healthy sign," Willa observed cheerfully. "Lots of people are rotters and never find it out. It's like a disease; when you know what is the matter, you can usually find a cure."

"Sometimes it's incurable." His voice was m.u.f.fled. "I'm in a hole and there's no way out."

"Then climb up again." Willa paused and added deliberately: "Don't try to burrow a pa.s.sage-way through slime, Vernon. You'll only get in deeper and deeper."

That brought his head up with a suspicious start.

"I say, what do you know about it?"

"Suppose you tell me?"

"You, Willa? You're the last person in the world--!" He broke off hastily.

"Why? If you are in a sc.r.a.pe perhaps I could help you out of it."

"It's worse than a sc.r.a.pe! It's something beyond the pale; it's the sort of thing they shoot a man for, down where you came from! Now you know!"

"Yes," responded Willa slowly, "I do know. Now tell me what that check is, which Starr Wiley is holding over your head."

Vernon rose with blanching face.

"You heard! Good Lord, where were you?"

"In the furnace!" Willa dimpled irrepressibly. "Right in it, with the ashes and all! And you stood talking straight down into the open register, like a speaking tube."

Vernon cringed away from her in bitter shame.

"Then if you heard the whole thing, you know what a wretched cad I've been, spying on you and trying to get information from you for that bounder."

"I knew about that before, Vernon. When I met you leaving the club yesterday and you tried to question me about Tia Juana, you made a dreadful mess of it. I saw right through you and I realized for whom you must be acting, but not why, of course." She drew a deep breath and added in a matter-of-fact tone: "What's the matter with that check Wiley has? Is it a forgery?"

He nodded dumbly.

"Whose name did you sign? I might as well know the rest, don't you think?"

"Mason North's." His voice was a mere strained whisper. "I must have been crazy to do such a thing!"

"What sum did you make it out for?"

"Four thousand dollars." He gazed at her as if hypnotized, replying mechanically under the sheer dominance of her will.

"Was it for speculation or in payment of some sort of debt?"

"A debt of honor!" He laughed in measureless self-contempt. "Poker."

"I see. But, Vernon, don't make me drag it out of you like this. Tell me the whole story."

"It was before Starr went to Mexico." Vernon hesitated and then the words came with a rush from his overburdened breast. "He was playing up strong to Angie, and he saw I didn't like it. Father is hipped about him and so is old North; they think he's the coming man in the oil game, and he may be for all I know, but I'd heard other things about him and I wasn't keen on having him for a brother-in-law. He began to jolly me along; made up parties and wanted me to pal around with him. He's older and he goes with the swiftest bunch in town, and, like a regular saphead, I was flattered. He put me up at his club, and I got into some pretty high play, away over my head, but I wouldn't have him or his friends think I was a piker, so I stuck.

"He won usually, and I almost got writer's cramp making out I. O. U.'s for him. Then his manner changed a bit and he began kidding me. He was good-natured with it at first, but after a while he grew nasty, and one night he taunted me before the whole crowd about my four-flushing.

"I'd been drinking and it made me wild. I don't know what put the idea in my head, but I brooded over it and I couldn't see any other way out.

Father had said when he paid my debts before that it was the last time, and he meant it. I--I took a check from his desk--he and Mason North have accounts in the same bank--and I made it out, copying the signature from an old letter."

His voice was getting lower and lower, and finally it halted, but Willa prompted him firmly.

"What happened after you gave it to Starr Wiley?"

"Nothing. I realized what I had done when it was too late, of course, and I lived in just plain h.e.l.l for the next four weeks, waiting for the blow to fall, but it didn't. At last I couldn't stand the strain any longer; I went to Starr and asked him if he'd put it through, and he said he hadn't. He knew when he accepted it from me that it was forged. I had given him a song-and-dance about it being some money coming to me from your grandfather's estate, but it hadn't fooled him for a minute.

"I groveled at his feet and told him I'd work my fingers to the bone to pay it back, but he said I could do that in his way, at his own time.

He's held me under his thumb ever since, and when he got in town a few days ago he sent for me and forced me to try to get a line on this Tia Juana woman through you. I hated it, Willa, but, G.o.d! what could I do?"

"What you are going to do now." Willa rose with decision. "You're going to Mason North at once, and make a clean breast of the whole thing."

"I couldn't! I thought of that, but you don't know the old boy--"

"I know he's square, and I guess I can handle him, if you can't. I'm going with you and I'll reimburse him for the four thousand, to let the check go through. Then you can tell Wiley to go--to go ahead and show you up."

"Willa!" Something very like a sob welled up in his throat. "You would do that for me, after--after----"

"You didn't do anything very dreadful to me, Vernon."

"But I promised to spy on you."

"That's all right. Wiley is in this affair simply on a business deal as he told you to-day, although I doubt the squareness as far as he is concerned. But I'm out for higher stakes--" She paused, clinching her hands. "Never mind about that. I'm going to 'phone Mr. North, and see if we can catch him at home."

"Look here." There was a ring of strength in Vernon's tones. "I appreciate, no end, what you've offered to do, Willa, but it can't be!

I'm pretty low, I'll admit, but I'm not such a rotter as to take that kind of help from a girl!"

"Why not?" Willa asked quickly. "You said yourself this afternoon that I was one of the family, and, besides, you can pay me back, you know."

"I wonder if you really believe that I would!" he remarked wistfully.

"I know you _will_!" she retorted. "I'm putting up that money on a bet with myself, and it's a sure thing. You'll make good, Vernon."

Mason North was comfortably ensconced in his own library, with a Life of Disraeli and a malodorous pipe, when Willa burst in upon him.

"Mr. North, you told me to come to you if I was in any difficulty, and--and I'm here!"

"Certainly, my dear!" He was plainly startled. "I shall be delighted to be of any service that I can. What is it that you wish my advice on?"