The Red Mouse Part 30

Carried away by the tender accents with which she p.r.o.nounced his name, Murgatroyd essayed to speak, but she interrupted him.

"Don't"--covering her ears with her hands--"don't tell me! I know you did it--because I--I--oh, why did you listen to me! I thought I knew what I was talking about," she went on, while he sought control of himself by looking away from her; "but I knew nothing of conditions; of men. I thought that a man--that you could accomplish anything you really wanted to do. But you were right. There are impossibilities. I understand now--now that it's too late. I have had my lesson. Only a few months ago you were honest, and now you are corrupt, and I alone am responsible!"

By the time she had finished speaking Murgatroyd had become as imperturbable as he had been at the trial, and there was only a hint of tenderness in the rea.s.suring words that he now uttered.

"You must not blame yourself--" he was neither admitting nor denying the impeachment--"for anything I may have done."

"But I do, I do," she cried bitterly. "And you must blame me. I always thought Adam was a coward to cast the blame on Eve. But now my sympathies are with him--the woman was to blame then--I am to blame now.

I gave you of the apple, and you--Oh, there would have been no apple--nothing but Eden if I had only listened to you and you had closed your ears to me."

"Eden," he said wistfully. "Yes, but hardly the Eden you cared for."

Abruptly her mood changed. She lost all semblance of calm, and her voice rang with a scorn that, before she ceased, seemed to include him as well as herself.

"What do I care for success or failure! I could cut my tongue out for telling you that my father was a failure. A failure! Why, I know that not only was he not a failure, but that he was really great! A man in the highest sense of the word--and that's all I want you to be. I don't care an iota that you should be a senator--I don't want you to be a senator. I have sent for you to-night to tell you so--to stop for good and all the thing I set in motion." She was silent for an instant; and then suddenly with a quick return to gentleness, and with appeal in her eyes, she murmured: "I want you to come back--come back."

In turn he murmured words that sounded to her like "to you."

Shirley shook her head as though that were a thing out of the question.

"No, to your honest self," she said earnestly but kindly. "To the Billy Murgatroyd that was."

For a moment they looked steadily into each other's eyes. From the time of Miriam's exposure of him in the court-room there had never been any admission, any concession on Murgatroyd's part. Nor was there any now; but unknown to himself, there was an air of appeal, not wholly free from anxiety even, for her face was again showing signs of hardness as he spoke:--

"I can hardly do that. I cannot stop. And if I should--where is the inducement? You have no apple to offer me; you are beyond my reach."

And as if to disprove his own words, an impulse of adoration, too powerful to be checked, seized him, and he caught her hand and pressed it.

A brief moment only Shirley allowed it to rest in his, then slowly withdrew it; and her action told him plainer than words that there was to be nothing further between them--she was through with him--she must despise him. As an evangelist, as the good friend she had sent for him, but as lovers--no, that was all over. And yet, had she faltered once, had she but opened her arms to him, if only for the last time, Murgatroyd could not tell what he would have done. In all probability he would have suffered exile--sackcloth and ashes for his huge misdeed.

And the girl! Shirley felt, knew that there could be no compromise.

Murgatroyd must purge himself, even though it involved a lifetime of shame. And after he had yielded up his shameless gains, what then?

Shirley did not know--she could not tell. But it was not given to Murgatroyd to know that he was the subject of her perplexities; nor could he read, as he should have, any hope in the words which she now spoke:--

"And if I am out of your reach--it's your own fault. If you had been half the man I thought, you would never have listened to me. But you never cared for me, even though you said so," Shirley said, casting her eyes down, not daring to look him in the face. "What you did, you did for yourself and not for me. You were weak from the start. Any man who would surrender his honesty even for a woman is not a man. I see now that I ought not to have sent for you. I take back everything I have said." She paused, and then concluded with a little shake of the head:--

"I wouldn't marry you now if you were the last man on earth!"

Both rose to their feet. Habit, perhaps, rather than any regret for her words, induced her to dismiss him with a tender expression on her face.

And Murgatroyd bowed low over the hand she offered him, pressed it and without a word of protest went out of the room. With his departure went out the last glimmer of hope that he would ever return to his better self. Nothing could stop him now. As for Shirley? The moment the door closed on him she sank with a moan into a chair.

Thorne took an appeal from the verdict of conviction. He had been careful to take exception to each bit of questionable evidence.

"I think," he a.s.sured Mrs. Challoner, "that I have found more than one hook to hang a hat on. It looks to me like a reversal."

"I am sure it will be," she replied.

Her a.s.surance was the same a.s.surance that had sustained her in the trial. There was still that mysterious something that Thorne could not understand. She seemed the incarnation of hope.

"What do you think, chief?" asked McGrath of Murgatroyd, one day after the appeal had been argued.

Murgatroyd shrugged his shoulders.

"That verdict will stick," was his only comment.

"By the way," said McGrath, "Pemmican keeps mum up there in jail; but he's getting restless as thunder. He wants to know how soon you're going to try him on this gambling charge."

Murgatroyd smiled.

"In due course," he returned, "but you can tell Pemmican unofficially that the quickest way for him to get on trial--or in fact the quickest way for him to get off without trial--to get out of jail, is to let me know the name of the man higher up. I'm looking for John Doe, and I expect to keep Pemmican under lock and key until I get him. You understand?"

"He sure does kick," laughed McGrath.

Shirley and Miriam and even Challoner watched the course of events with great interest. Miriam's mouth was sealed upon the question of the bribe, but Challoner absorbed what he had heard in the court-room, and hazy though it had been, he noted that Miriam's manner was still hopeful, in fact, certain. Shirley, too, felt, rather than knew, that Murgatroyd had removed from himself not the taint of bribery, but the violation of his compact. She felt the thing was cut and dried.

One day the Clerk of the Court of Errors and Appeals placed in the hands of a special messenger a doc.u.ment some five pages long. It was a carbon copy.

"Take that to the prosecutor of the pleas," he commanded, "and tell him it's advance. The original," he added, "will be on file to-morrow."

Murgatroyd received and read it with inward satisfaction. As he was perusing it, Mixley rushed into his private room, and yelled in alarm:--

"Chief! Chief! Look at this!" He, too, held in his hand a doc.u.ment composed of several sheets of yellow paper, scribbled over with a soft, black, lead-pencil. "It's from the warden--" he whispered.

Murgatroyd laid down his carbon copy and took Mixley's yellow sheets. He read the first page and rose to his feet.

"When did all this happen, Mixley?" he asked in a tense voice, with difficulty restraining his excitement.

"About an hour ago."

"Who was the keeper that took this down?"

"Jennings."

Murgatroyd tapped the yellow sheets impatiently, and asked:--

"How did he kill himself?"

"Cyanide! Smuggled in somehow, n.o.body knows."

Murgatroyd read the yellow sheets again.

"Great Caesar!" he exclaimed.

Mixley, still lingering, now asked:--

"Any news from the Court of Errors and Appeals?"