Part 42 (1/2)
”You're up against it, Morley. You know it as well as we do. And we don't want to trick you or bully you. We're only after the truth. If you'll tell the truth, it will help you and us. Will you give us a straight story?”
”Yes,” he answered dully, his hands folded, like a woman's, against his body.
Braceway put more imperiousness into his voice.
”You know you're under arrest for embezzlement, don't you?”
”Yes.”
”And you did take money from the Anderson National Bank?”
Morley squirmed and looked at each of the three in front of him before he replied to that.
”Yes,” he said finally, swallowing hard, his voice high and strained.
”Good! That's the sensible way to look at it,” Braceway jogged him with rapid speech. ”We needn't bother any more about that tonight. How about the jewelry you p.a.w.ned in Baltimore today?”
The prisoner licked his lips and fixed on Braceway a look that grew into a stare.
”You mean the rubies?”
”Well, yes.”
”I didn't p.a.w.n them, and--and they were my mother's.”
”How about the diamonds and emeralds?”
”I had no diamonds and emeralds.”
”You didn't! Where were you all the afternoon preceding the time you showed up at Eidstein's?”
This was his first intimation that he had been watched. He hesitated.
”Do I have to tell that?”
”Certainly. Why shouldn't you?”
A film, like tears, clouded his weak eyes. His voice was disagreeably beseeching.
”It would bring my mother into this,” he objected, twining his fingers about each other and shuffling his feet.
”You'll have to tell us where you were and what you did,” Braceway persisted.
”Oh, very well,” he said desperately; ”I was in a room in the Emerson Hotel with--with my mother. And I was--I was confessing to her that I'd stolen from the bank. She knew I needed money. I had told her I'd been speculating, and needed some extra money for margins. She gave me the rubies from her earrings; and she followed me to Baltimore. If I couldn't raise the money on the rubies, she was to borrow it on our house. She owns that.”
He paused, on the verge of tears.
”Buck up!” Braceway prodded him. ”You confessed to her, did you?”
”Yes. At the last, somehow, I couldn't stand the idea of her giving up the last thing she had, but--but she would have done it.”