The Red Mouse Part 52

"Do you see these seals?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Unbroken, are they not?"

"Yes," again she a.s.sented faintly.

"Well, then, you know what is inside of them; I do not."

"I?--" faltered Miriam. "Why----"

Then followed a moment of racking suspense for all, except, perhaps, Murgatroyd.

"Mrs. Challoner," he resumed, "you told me once that there were eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars in negotiable securities in these boxes. If what you then said was true, there they are, coupons and all."

"But, Mr. Murgatroyd," protested Mrs. Challoner, "you said that you did not have any money...."

Murgatroyd smiled.

"I spoke the truth. But you...." And now, to Challoner's great surprise, Murgatroyd fixed his eyes on him, and said in a voice that impressed them all the more, inasmuch as it was filled with a kindly confidence rather than with distrust:--

"There's eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars in those boxes, Challoner, belonging to your wife. Can you stand having it back again?"

Challoner looked puzzled; for as Miriam had told Shirley, he had had no reason to believe that his wife's fortune had not all been spent by them. Slowly he began to understand, but he was too overcome to speak.

Presently he found his voice and said:--

"Can I stand----"

"Yes," interrupted Murgatroyd, "you know what money did for you before--what it led to--" He broke off abruptly, and turning to Shirley he added: "I told you once, Miss Bloodgood, that there was but one way to cure a bad millionaire, but one way to reform him, and that was to take away his millions. Well, I took away his!"

All eyes now rested on Challoner, who, oblivious to his surroundings, seemed lost in thought,--and who can tell what dreams may come to one suddenly lifted from the depths of poverty back again to affluence. But in any event, looking the prosecutor straight in the face he said in an easy, determined voice:--

"Billy Murgatroyd, a little while ago you asked whether I could stand having all this again; the past five years of my life is my answer to that."

This reply brought to his wife's face a look of pride, and unconsciously she straightened up in her chair; while Shirley sighed perceptibly.

"Laurie," went on Murgatroyd, still probing, but not unkindly, "what are you going to do with all this money?"

"You'll have to ask Miriam about that," he returned quickly; and then with a charming smile, he added: "I have learned that a man's mission is to make money, and a woman's...."

Suddenly, Challoner grew thoughtful again.

"To think of the time," he said, half-aloud, "that it took Miriam and me to save five hundred dollars!"

"That five hundred that you saved," commented Murgatroyd solemnly, "is worth more to you than all this eight hundred and sixty thousand."

"There's no mistake about that either, Murgatroyd," spoke up Challoner promptly; but bending over his wife, he added with a fascinating smile:--

"Miriam, you're going to let me build that hospital, aren't you?"

Simultaneously with Miriam's monosyllabic answer, Murgatroyd glanced at Challoner sharply, not forgetting, quite naturally, how easy in the past it had been for the husband to get whatever he wanted from his wife; his doubts, however, were only momentary, for presently he pushed the boxes toward them, saying:--

"There it is--it all belongs to you."

But in all this Shirley had been strangely silent.

"Mr. Murgatroyd," she now said icily, "do you mean to tell us that your only motive in taking this money was to save Mr. Challoner?"

Murgatroyd took a few steps toward her and regarded her coolly.

"No--and you alone were right. I was bribed--I was corrupt--I was a thief."

"No, no," cried out Shirley, relenting.

"Yes," he went on mercilessly, "it is true. It was my ambition that did it. Besides, I was tempted by a woman----"

"A woman----" faltered the girl.

"Like Adam, I'm blaming it on Eve. This woman wanted me to be, well, really great----"

"You----"

"Yes," he persisted, "I was bribed. I took the money. Oh, you don't know about me! You don't know what I was five years ago! It seemed to me then that money was the only thing that could make me really great. I knelt at the shrine of money--loved it as a dipsomaniac loves his bottle."

He paused; then he continued in a low voice:--

"Yes, I took money to acquit Challoner, and then I convicted him. Why?

Because the instinct within me to do my duty was too strong to allow me to do otherwise. All the evidence was against him; he had confessed; I had to convict him."

"And the money--" ventured Shirley.

"Like a dipsomaniac,--a reformed dipsomaniac,--I put that money as he might have his bottle, on the shelf--corked. There it was--I could have it any time I wanted it." His face became more serious as he proceeded: "Then I kept on being a thief, for there was a new and overpowering motive that got the best of me. Like the reformed dipsomaniac I was determined to see what I could do without it. It became a pa.s.sion with me. I knew that every move I made meant the expenditure of money. A hundred times, yes, a thousand times I have had my fingers on those seals about to break them, and then have crawled away--once more to do without the money. Somehow, I knew, that my time must come. Besides, there was that overwhelming ambition,--prompted by a woman."

Shirley hung her head.

"Yes," he went on fiercely, "a woman who must have her due; it was up to me to be something more than merely honest. Anybody could be honest, she told me, but not everybody could be great!"

Shirley ventured to look up at him, but meeting his gaze fixed on her face, she shifted her eyes instantly.

"Then there was the United States senatorship,--the fairest office in the State,--which I knew I could buy with the money for which I had sold my soul. Again and again I came into this office and went to that vault there, determined to break the seals of the covers on those boxes--to buy the United States senatorship. But I could not bring myself to do it. Something always said to me: 'YOU MUST DO WITHOUT IT! YOU MUST BE HONEST! YOU MUST MAKE A CLEAN FIGHT!' Yet, still, I was a thief: holding thousands that didn't belong to me. But always upon me was that all-absorbing pa.s.sion,--a pa.s.sion, not to use, but to do without the thing which was at my finger's ends,--an incentive without which I could not succeed. And so," he concluded, "I went in and won without it."

A tense silence followed the prosecutor's amazingly frank revelation of his temptation and the success which he extorted from it. Unconsciously, he a.s.sumed an att.i.tude which it would not be unfair to describe as a defensive one, in readiness, as it were, for any possible strictures on his conduct. Nothing of the sort, however, was forthcoming. On the contrary, at least, as far as Mrs. Challoner was concerned, at no time, not even when his self-arraignment had been the most severe, had his terrible words succeeded in driving the happy light from her eyes. There were moments, it is true, when a dull pallour had spread over her features, a pallour, however, caused solely by sudden stings of agonising memories, and those soft brown eyes had been raised to his questioningly; but his personality had ever been more or less baffling and mysterious to her; and so, whether semi-fascinated or not, they left him thoroughly satisfied with their scrutiny.

Probably better than any one present, Challoner realised to the full what Murgatroyd had suffered. Manlike, however, he was more than willing to permit the great work that Murgatroyd had done to overshadow completely his questionable proceedings. Of course, Challoner was quite well aware that the prosecutor's actions viewed in the light of a successful campaign wore an entirely different aspect than they would had he failed to obtain the senatorship. In the latter case it was inevitable, no matter what moral satisfaction he could derive from the return of the money,--and in fairness to Challoner be it said that he never once questioned it,--that in addition to the humiliation of a ruined career, the prosecutor would have to endure the mortification of knowing that his loss of self-respect was wholly futile. But in any event, Challoner was too generous not to accept without reservation Murgatroyd's contention that, at least in part, he was actuated by a praiseworthy desire to save his wife and him from the results of his dissipations. To a man, such as Challoner now was, it can easily be imagined, therefore, that he would regard that alone as sufficient reason to overlook everything else, and so rising, he grabbed impulsively Murgatroyd's hand, saying:--

"Not another word, old man! It's all right!"

Murgatroyd was visibly affected.