Part 62 (2/2)
”Why? What?” he asked in bewilderment.
”Den ven you could not pay the note, I vas to foreclose and hand over dot Northern Peninsula land to Joseph Newmark, your partner.”
”Impossible!” cried Orde.
”I vas to get a share. It vas a trick.”
”Go on,” said Orde grimly.
”Dere is no go on. Dot is all.”
”Why do you come to tell me now?”
”Because for more than one year now I say to mineself, 'Carl Heinzman, you vas one dirty scoundrel. You vas dishonest; a sneak; a thief'; I don't like to call myself names like dose. It iss all righdt to be smart; but to be a thief!”
”Why didn't you pull out?” asked Orde.
”I couldn't!” cried Heinzman piteously. ”How could I? He haf me cold.
I paid Stanford five hundred dollars for his vote on the charter; and Joseph Newmark, he know dot; he can PROVE it. He tell me if I don't do what he say, he put me in jail. Think of dot! All my friends go back on me; all my money gone; maybe my daughter Mina go back on me, too. How could I?”
”Well, he can still put you in prison,” said Orde.
”Vot I care?” cried Heinzman, throwing up both his arms. ”You and your wife are my friends. She save my Mina. DU LIEBER GOTT! If my daughter had died, vot good iss friends and money? Vot good iss anything? I don't vant to live! And ven I sit dere by her always something ask me: 'Vy you do dot to the peoples dot safe your Mina?' And ven she look at me, her eyes say it; and in the night everything cry out at me; and I get sick, and I can't stand it no longer, and I don't care if he send me to prison or to h.e.l.l, no more.”
His excitement died. He sat listless, his eyes vacant, his hands between his knees.
”Vell, I go,” he said at last.
”Have you that note?” asked Orde.
”Joseph Newmark, he keeps it most times,” replied Heinzman, ”but now it is at my office for the foreclosure. I vill not foreclose; he can send me to the penitentiary.”
”Telephone Lambert in the morning to give it to me. No; here. Write an order in this notebook.”
Heinzman wrote the required order.
”I go,” said he, suddenly weary.
Orde accompanied him down the street. The German was again light-headed with the fever, mumbling about his daughter, the notes, Carroll, the voices that had driven him to righteousness. By some manoeuvring Orde succeeded in slipping him through the improvised quarantine without discovery. Then the riverman with slow and thoughtful steps returned to where the lamp in the study still marked off with the s.p.a.ced replenishments from its oil reservoir the early morning hours.
XLVI
Morning found Orde still seated in the library chair. His head was sunk forward on his chest; his hands were extended listless, palms up, along the arms of the chair; his eyes were vacant and troubled. Hardly once in the long hours had he s.h.i.+fted by a hair's breadth his position. His body was suspended in an absolute inaction while his spirit battered at the walls of an impa.s.se. For, strangely enough, Orde did not once, even for a single instant, give a thought to the business aspects of the situation--what it meant to him and his prospects or what he could do about it. Hurt to the soul he stared at the wreck of a friends.h.i.+p.
Nothing will more deeply sicken the heart of a naturally loyal man than to discover baseless his faith in some one he has thoroughly trusted.
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