Part 22 (1/2)
”What is the matter, Vernon?” she asked abruptly. ”You haven't been at all like yourself these last few days. We're pals, you know; tell me.”
He glanced up, hastily s.h.i.+fted his eyes, and then blurted out desperately.
”If you'd ever been an absolute rotter and then got on to the fact when it was too late, I guess you wouldn't be very much like yourself, either.
I'm a confounded cad, Willa, and worse!” He dropped his head on his hands with a groan. ”I ought to be shot!”
”Well, that's a healthy sign,” Willa observed cheerfully. ”Lots of people are rotters and never find it out. It's like a disease; when you know what is the matter, you can usually find a cure.”
”Sometimes it's incurable.” His voice was m.u.f.fled. ”I'm in a hole and there's no way out.”
”Then climb up again.” Willa paused and added deliberately: ”Don't try to burrow a pa.s.sage-way through slime, Vernon. You'll only get in deeper and deeper.”
That brought his head up with a suspicious start.
”I say, what do you know about it?”
”Suppose you tell me?”
”You, Willa? You're the last person in the world--!” He broke off hastily.
”Why? If you are in a sc.r.a.pe perhaps I could help you out of it.”
”It's worse than a sc.r.a.pe! It's something beyond the pale; it's the sort of thing they shoot a man for, down where you came from! Now you know!”
”Yes,” responded Willa slowly, ”I do know. Now tell me what that check is, which Starr Wiley is holding over your head.”
Vernon rose with blanching face.
”You heard! Good Lord, where were you?”
”In the furnace!” Willa dimpled irrepressibly. ”Right in it, with the ashes and all! And you stood talking straight down into the open register, like a speaking tube.”
Vernon cringed away from her in bitter shame.
”Then if you heard the whole thing, you know what a wretched cad I've been, spying on you and trying to get information from you for that bounder.”
”I knew about that before, Vernon. When I met you leaving the club yesterday and you tried to question me about Tia Juana, you made a dreadful mess of it. I saw right through you and I realized for whom you must be acting, but not why, of course.” She drew a deep breath and added in a matter-of-fact tone: ”What's the matter with that check Wiley has? Is it a forgery?”
He nodded dumbly.
”Whose name did you sign? I might as well know the rest, don't you think?”
”Mason North's.” His voice was a mere strained whisper. ”I must have been crazy to do such a thing!”
”What sum did you make it out for?”
”Four thousand dollars.” He gazed at her as if hypnotized, replying mechanically under the sheer dominance of her will.
”Was it for speculation or in payment of some sort of debt?”
”A debt of honor!” He laughed in measureless self-contempt. ”Poker.”