To Him That Hath. Scott Leroy
in passive ignorance; so he locked the study door and began seeking evidence to dispel or confirm his fear. He took the books from the safe – he remembered the combination from the summer he had spent at the Mission – and turned them through, afraid to look at each new page. But the books dealt only with small sums for incidental expenses; the large bills were paid by cheque from the treasurer of the Board of Trustees. There was nothing here. He looked through the papers in the desk – among them no reference to the money. He scrutinised every page of paper in the safe, except the contents of one locked compartment. No reference. Knowing he would find nothing, he examined Morton's private bank-book: a record of the monthly cheque deposited and numerous small withdrawals – that was all.
And then he picked up a note-book that all the while had been lying on the desk. He began to thumb it through, not with hope of discovering a clue but merely as a routine act of a thorough search. It was half engagement book, half diary. David turned to the page dated with the day of Morton's death, intending to work from there backwards – and upon the page he found this note of an engagement:
"5 P. M. – at Mr. Haddon's office – first fall meeting of Boy's Farm Committee."
He turned slowly back through the leaves of September, August, July, June, finding not a single suggestive record. But this memorandum, on the fifteenth of May, stopped him short:
"Boy's Farm Committee adjourned to-day till fall, as Mr. Chambers and Mr. Haddon go to Europe. Money left in Third National Bank in my name, to pay for farm when formalities of sale are completed."
Instantly David thought of an entry on the first of June recording that, with everything settled save merely the binding formalities, the farmer had suddenly broken off the deal, having had a better offer.
Here was the money, every instinct told David. But the case was not yet proved; the money might be lying in the bank, untouched. He grasped at this chance. There must be a bank-book and cheque-book somewhere, he knew, and as he had searched the office like a pocket, except for the drawer of the safe, he guessed they must be there. After a long hunt for the key to this drawer, he found a bunch of keys in the trousers Morton had worn the day before his death. One of these opened the drawer, and sure enough here were cheque-book and bank-book.
David gazed at these for a full minute before he gained sufficient mastery of himself to open the bank-book. On the first page was this single line:
This was the only entry, and the fact gave him a moment's hope. He opened the cheque-book – and his hope was gone. Seven stubs recorded that seven cheques had been drawn to "self," four for $500 each, and three for $1,000.
Even amid the chill of horror that now enwrapped him, David clearly understood how Morton had permitted himself to use this fund. Here was a woman with power to destroy, demanding money. Here was money for which account need not be rendered for months. In Morton's situation a man of strong will, of courageous integrity, might have resigned and told the woman to do her worst. But David suddenly saw again Morton's dead face upon the pillow, and he was startled to see that the mouth was small, the chin weak. He now recognised, what he would have recognised before had the fault not been hidden among a thousand virtues, that Morton did not have a strong will. He recognised that a man might have genius and all the virtues, save only courage, and yet fail to carry himself honourably through a crisis that a man of merest mediocrity might have weathered well.
If exposure came – so Temptation must have spoken to Morton – all that he had done for his neighbours would be destroyed, and with it all his power for future service. He could take five hundred dollars, buy the woman's silence, and somehow replace the money before he need account for his trust. But she had demanded more, and more, and more; and once involved, his only safety, and that but temporary, was to go on – with the terror of the day of reckoning before him.
And then, while he sat chilled, David's mind began to add mechanically three things together. First, the engagement Philip had had on the day of his death with the Boys' Farm Committee; at that he would have had to account for the five thousand dollars, and his embezzlement would have been laid open. Second, the certainty of exposure from Lillian Drew, since he had no more money to ward it off. Third, was it not remarkable that Morton's heart trouble, if heart trouble there had been, with fifteen hundred minutes in the day in which to strike, had selected the single minute he spent in his bath?
As David struck the sum of these, there crawled into his heart another awful fear. Would a man who had not had the courage to face the danger of one exposure, have the courage to face a double exposure? Had Morton's death been natural, or —
Sickened, David let his head fall forward upon his arms, folded on the desk – and so he sat, motionless, as twilight, then darkness, crept into the room.
CHAPTER III
THE BARGAIN
David was still sitting bowed amid appalling darkness, when Mrs. Humphrey knocked and called to him that dinner waited. He had no least desire for food, and as he feared his face might advertise his discoveries to Dr. Thorn and Mrs. Humphrey, he slipped out of the apartment and sent word by the janitor that he would not be in to dinner. For an hour and a half he walked the tenement-cliffed streets, trying to force his distracted mind to deduce the probable consequences of Morton's acts.
At length one result stood forth distinct, inevitable: Morton's death was not going to save his good name. In a few days his embezzlement would be discovered. There would be an investigation as to what he had done with the money. Try as the committee might to keep the matter secret, the embezzlement would leak out and afford sensational copy for the papers. Lillian Drew, out of her malevolence, would manage to triple the scandal with her story; and then someone would climax the two exposures by putting one and one together, as he had done, and deducing that Morton's lamented death was suicide. In a week, perhaps in three days, all New York would know what David knew.
He was re-entering the club-house, shortly after eight o'clock, when the sound of singing in the chapel reminded him that the regular Thursday even prayer-meeting had been turned into a neighbourhood memorial service for Morton. He slipped quietly into the rear of the chapel. It was crowded, as at the funeral. Dr. Thorn, who was temporarily at the head of the Mission, was on the rostrum, but a teamster from the neighbourhood was in charge of the meeting. The order of the service consisted of brief tributes to Morton, brief statements of what he had meant to their lives. As David listened to the testimonies, uncouth in the wording, but splendid in feeling, the speaker sometimes stopped by his own emotion, sometimes by sobbing from the audience – his tears loosened and flowed with theirs.
And then came a change in his view-point. He found himself thinking, not of Morton the individual, Morton his friend, but of Morton in his relation to these people. What great good he had brought them! How dependent they had been upon him, how they now clung to him and were lifted up by his memory! And how they loved him!
But what would they be saying about him a week hence?
The question plunged into David like a knife. He hurried from the chapel and upstairs into Morton's study. Here was the most ghastly of all the consequences of Morton's deeds. What would be the effect on these people of the knowledge he had gained that afternoon? They were not discriminating, could not select the good, discard and forget the evil. He still loved Morton; Morton to him was a man strong and great at ninety-nine points, weak at one. Impregnable at all other points, temptations had assailed his one weakness, conquered him and turned his life into complete disaster. But, David realised, the neighbourhood could not see Morton as he saw him. They could see only the evils of his one point of weakness, see him only as guilty of larger sins than the most sinful of themselves – as a libertine, an embezzler, a suicide.
And they would be helped to this new view by the elements he had fought. How old Boss Grogan would rejoice in Morton's fall – how his one eye would light up, and triumph overspread his veinous, pouched face! How he and his henchmen, victory-sure, would return to their attack on the Mission, going among its people with sneers at Morton and at them!
There was no doubt in David's mind of the effect of all this upon them. The words of a shrivelled old woman who had given