The Red Mouse Part 53

"Thank you," he said simply; and then added: "Only one thing more remains to be done. Mrs. Challoner, I must ask you to break these seals."

Miriam demurred.

"Oh, no, Mr. Murgatroyd!" she said. "Surely you must know that I believe you!"

But Murgatroyd insisted; and obeying him finally, Miriam broke the seals, and presently she showed to them the securities, undisturbed, just as Murgatroyd had taken them, dollar for dollar, bond and bond.

Suddenly Murgatroyd felt a touch on the arm.

"And I believe you, Billy," said s.h.i.+rley contritely.

An enigmatical smile pa.s.sed across the prosecutor's face.

"Do you, indeed?" he said dryly; and added: "That's, perhaps, more than I had any right to expect."

A slight pucker showed on Miss Bloodgood's beautiful brow, but she replied, quite unruffled:--

"Why, of course, I do. After all, you were honest, weren't you?" And not waiting for his answer, added ingenuously: "You were not a thief!"

Instantly the expression on Murgatroyd's face became a very serious one.

"Yes, I was," he protested, "I was a thief." And with that he turned to Challoner and said in a voice of great feeling: "Challoner, this money is your wife's. Take it. And great G.o.d, man," he groaned, "don't, don't forget what it did to you--what it made you, years ago."

Mrs. Challoner s.h.i.+vered at the prosecutor's earnestness; but Challoner, hesitating for a moment only, advanced and said:--

"We'll take it. I'm not a bit afraid now, Murgatroyd--for I _know_." And then holding out his hand, he continued kindly: "Billy, if you hadn't taken it--where would I have been to-day?"

"Free--free as you are now," said the other man in a low, strained tone.

"Yes," a.s.sented Challoner, "out of prison, but----"

Mrs. Challoner quickly rose and put an end to the conversation going on between the men.

"Come, Laurie," she said abruptly; and holding out her hand, "good-bye, Mr. Murgatroyd! I'm afraid we have taken up altogether too much of your time."

Murgatroyd shook hands with the Challoners; but on s.h.i.+rley making her adieus, he said:--

"May I have a moment with you, Miss Bloodgood? Won't you wait, please?"

Mrs. Challoner answered for the girl:--

"s.h.i.+rley, don't be in any hurry. Laurie and I will wait for you in the ante-room--" And as they pa.s.sed out Challoner called: "Wait until you see that concrete hospital, Murgatroyd!"

For moments that seemed hours s.h.i.+rley and Murgatroyd stood facing each other, neither having the courage to speak, the girl filled with shame at the great wrong she had done to the man she loved; while he, feeling as if the burden that had rested upon his soul had at last rolled away, was drawing deep breaths--breathing like a man who has suddenly come out of darkness into the daylight. s.h.i.+rley was the first to break the silence; and now looking up at Murgatroyd, with a little shake of the head she asked:--

"Billy, do you care to know what I think of you?"

"Perhaps, if I had cared less, I----"

But not for a moment would s.h.i.+rley listen now to his censuring himself further, and quickly she cut him off.

"I think it was a far finer thing to take the money and not touch it,"

she declared with true feminine logic, "than never to have taken it at all."

"But what if this habit should grow upon me," he retorted smilingly.

"Evidently Miss Bloodgood doesn't know what graft awaits me in Was.h.i.+ngton?"

s.h.i.+rley laughed softly.

"To think that you accomplished all this without money," she said happily.

"But the worst is yet to come," he observed quickly. "It means that one has to keep up the social game, the club game, the political game, and the Lord knows what other games on five thousand--or is it now seventy-five hundred a year? It means that an unmarried man must starve; and Heaven help the married senator! For he and his family must live on a back street in the capital and freeze. That's what it means to a senator who lives on his salary."

"But doesn't poverty always travel hand in hand with greatness," she remarked enthusiastically, and with superb disdain for anything that she may have said heretofore to the contrary.

Murgatroyd looked at her with admiration. Never before had her eyes seemed to him so blue and so lovely.

"There's one thing--one thing that I didn't tell Challoner and his wife," he said, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. "Can you guess what that something was that always made me keep my hands off those iron boxes?"

s.h.i.+rley lifted her eyes to his in quick understanding.

"It was my love for the woman who wanted me to be great," he went on in a voice so shaken with emotion, that she scarcely recognised it as belonging to him. "That was the motive that beat down all others."

"And will you forgive the foolish lips that told you to go wrong?"

For answer he held out his arms to her and she came to them. Then he stooped down, and catching her face between his hands, raised it slowly, and kissed the lips tenderly, murmuring lovingly:--

"Her soul would not let me go wrong."

After a moment s.h.i.+rley slowly drew herself out of his arms and placing a hand on each of his shoulders, asked laughingly, looking deep into his eyes:--

"And we'll go to Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"Yes, dear," he smiled back. "We're going to Was.h.i.+ngton--to freeze and starve together on that back street--Yes, my revenge is now complete."

Before he could kiss her a second time, s.h.i.+rley darted to the door, opened it and called:--

"Miriam, Laurie, come here--come back!"

One look at the face of the girl that she had left in the office was sufficient to tell Miriam that she had great news to communicate.

Nevertheless, she asked innocently:--

"What for, my dear? Are you going to lynch him?"

Blus.h.i.+ng furiously, s.h.i.+rley waved her hand at the boxes on the table and said:--

"Billy says that you've gone off and forgotten all your money!"