“If I only had some money!” he said. “But never mind about that, Joe; I’ll get some.”
Loud calls from below took Bill out of the room. As he closed the door behind him, K.‘s voice took on a new tone: “Joe, why did you do it?”
“You know.”
“You saw him with somebody at the White Springs, and followed them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who was with him?”
“Yes, and so do you. Don’t go into that. I did it, and I’ll stand by it.”
“Has it occurred to you that you made a mistake?”
“Go and tell that to somebody who’ll believe you!” he sneered. “They came here and took a room. I met him coming out of it. I’d do it again if I had a chance, and do it better.”
“It was not Sidney.”
“Aw, chuck it!”
“It’s a fact. I got here not two minutes after you left. The girl was still there. It was some one else. Sidney was not out of the hospital last night. She attended a lecture, and then an operation.”
Joe listened. It was undoubtedly a relief to him to know that it had not been Sidney; but if K. expected any remorse, he did not get it.
“If he is that sort, he deserves what he got,” said the boy grimly.
And K. had no reply. But Joe was glad to talk. The hours he had spent alone in the little room had been very bitter, and preceded by a time that he shuddered to remember. K. got it by degrees—his descent of the staircase, leaving Wilson lying on the landing above; his resolve to walk back and surrender himself at Schwitter’s, so that there could be no mistake as to who had committed the crime.
“I intended to write a confession and then shoot myself,” he told K. “But the barkeeper got my gun out of my pocket. And—”
After a pause: “Does she know who did it?”
“Sidney? No.”
“Then, if he gets better, she’ll marry him anyhow.”
“Possibly. That’s not up to us, Joe. The thing we’ve got to do is to hush the thing up, and get you away.”
“I’d go to Cuba, but I haven’t the money.”
K. rose. “I think I can get it.”
He turned in the doorway.
“Sidney need never know who did it.”
“I’m not ashamed of it.” But his face showed relief.
There are times when some cataclysm tears down the walls of reserve between men. That time had come for Joe, and to a lesser extent for K. The boy rose and followed him to the door.
“Why don’t you tell her the whole thing?—the whole filthy story?” he asked. “She’d never look at him again. You’re crazy about her. I haven’t got a chance. It would give you one.”
“I want her, God knows!” said K. “But not that way, boy.”
Schwitter had taken in five hundred dollars the previous day.
“Five hundred gross,” the little man hastened to explain. “But you’re right, Mr. Le Moyne. And I guess it would please HER. It’s going hard with her, just now, that she hasn’t any women friends about. It’s in the safe, in cash; I haven’t had time to take it to the bank.” He seemed to apologize to himself for the unbusinesslike proceeding of lending an entire day’s gross receipts on no security. “It’s better to get him away, of course. It’s good business. I have tried to have an orderly place. If they arrest him here—”
His voice trailed off. He had come a far way from the day he had walked down the Street, and eyed Its poplars with appraising eyes—a far way. Now he had a son, and the child’s mother looked at him with tragic eyes. It was arranged that K. should go back to town, returning late that night to pick up Joe at a lonely point on the road, and to drive him to a railroad station. But, as it happened, he went back that afternoon.
He had told Schwitter he would be at the hospital, and the message found him there. Wilson was holding his own, conscious now and making a hard fight. The message from Schwitter was very brief:—
“Something has happened, and Tillie wants you. I don’t like to trouble you again, but she—wants you.”
K. was rather gray of face by that time, having had no sleep and little food since the day before. But he got into the rented machine again—its rental was running up; he tried to forget it—and turned it toward Hillfoot. But first of all he drove back to the Street, and walked without ringing into Mrs. McKee’s.
Neither a year’s time nor Mrs. McKee’s approaching change of state had altered the “mealing” house. The ticket-punch still lay on the hat-rack in the hall. Through the rusty screen of the back parlor window one viewed the spiraea, still in need of spraying. Mrs. McKee herself was in the pantry, placing one slice of tomato and three small lettuce leaves on each of an interminable succession of plates.
K., who was privileged, walked back.
“I’ve got a car at the door,” he announced, “and there’s nothing so extravagant as an empty seat in an automobile. Will you take a ride?”
