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Page 13
"So have I," she admitted, facing him; "but, do you know, sometimes
I have thought that Malcolm Dodd is not your real name?"
"Not my real name?" he repeated.
"And that you are here for some other purpose than--just to rest.
You know, you might be a detective."
He had looked at her searchingly. Then in a burst of confidence, he
had replied, "No, my name is not Dodd, as you guessed. But I am not
a detective, as you suspected at first. I have been watching you
because, ever since I heard your story here, I have been--well, not
suspicious, but--attracted. You seem to me to have faced a great
problem. I, too, have come to the parting of the ways. Shall I run
or shall I fight?"
He had handed her a card without hesitation. It bore the name,
"Murray Dodge, Treasurer, Globe Importing Company."
"What do you mean?" she had asked quickly, hardly expecting an
answer. "What have you done?"
"Oh, it is the usual trouble, I suppose," he had replied wearily,
much to her surprise. "I began as a boy in the company and
ultimately worked myself up as it grew, until I became treasurer. To
cut it short, I have used funds belonging to the company, lost them.
I don't need to tell you how a treasurer or a cashier can do that."
Constance was actually startled. Was he what he represented himself
to be? Or was he leading her on in this way to a confession of her
own part, which she had covered so well, in the forgeries of her
dead husband?
"How did you begin?" she asked tentatively.
"A few years ago," he answered with a disconcerting lack of reserve,
"the company found that we could beat our competitors by a very
simple means. The largest stockholder, Mr. Dumont, was friendly with
some of the customs officials and--well, we undervalued our goods.
It was easy. The only thing necessary was to bribe some of the
officials. The president of the company, Walton Beverley, put the
dirty work on me as treasurer. Now you can imagine what that meant."
He had fallen into a cynical tone again.
"It meant that I soon found, or, rather, thought I found, that every
man has his price--some higher, some lower, but a price,
nevertheless. It was my business to find it, to keep it as low as I
could with safety. So it went, from one crooked thing to another. I
knew I was crooked, but not as bad, I think, as the rest who put the
actual work on me. I was unfortunate, weak perhaps. That is all. I
tried to get mine, too. I lost what I meant to put back after I had
used it. They are after me now, or soon will be--the crooks! And
here I am, momentarily expecting some one to walk up quietly behind
me, tap me on the shoulder and whisper, 'You're wanted.'"
Time had not softened the bitterness of Constance's feelings.
Somehow she felt that the world, or at least society owed her for
taking away her husband. The world must pay. She sympathized with
the young man who was appealing to her for friendship. Why not help
him?
"Do you really, really want to know what I think?" asked Constance
after he had at last told her his wretched story. It was the first
time that she had looked at him since she realized that he was
unburdening the truth to her.
"Yes," he answered eagerly, catching her eye. "Yes," he urged.
"I think," she said slowly, "that you are running away from a fight
that has not yet begun."
It thrilled her to be talking so. Once before she had tasted the
sweetness and the bitterness of crime. She did not stop to think
about right or wrong. If she had done so her ethics would have been
strangely illogical. It was enough that, short as their acquaintance
had been, she felt unconsciously that there was something latent in
the spirit of this man akin to her own.
Murray also felt rather than understood the bond that had been
growing so rapidly between them. His was the temperament that
immediately translates feeling into action. He reached into his
breast pocket. There was the blue-black glint of a cold steel
automatic. A moment he balanced it in his hand. Then with a rapid
and decisive motion of the arm he flung it far from him. As it
struck the water with a sound horribly suggestive of the death
gurgle of a lost man, he turned and faced her.
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