Part 9

"What is it, Madam?" asked the justice. And considering that the Court believed that it had to deal with a case of hysteria, the voice was surprisingly little tinged with irritability; but then the learned judge felt that he must make some concession to a woman of Mrs. Challoner's high social standing; and therefore he added politely: "You must be brief."

"I shall be brief," answered Mrs. Challoner, sending an accusing glance toward the prosecutor. "I desire to make a charge against Mr. Murgatroyd, the prosecutor of the pleas!" She was well contained, but her tone was harsh, cutting.

The Court glanced sympathetically at her, and then smiled gently, indulgently in the direction of the prosecutor.

"I accuse him of bribery!" she went on. "He promised to set my husband free!"

Shirley Bloodgood clutched her once more, pleading with her to stop.

"Miriam, what are you saying? You must stop this...."

"Bribery?" asked the justice, somewhat startled. "Bribery?"

For an instant there was a subdued uproar. Graham Thorne pressed forward toward the Court; Broderick from the crowd behind pushed his way into the enclosure; reporters thrust their pads and pencils into the scene; spectators stirred, became noisy; but Murgatroyd never moved.

"Let Mrs. Challoner go on," demanded Thorne.

The Court rapped loudly with his gavel; the crowd slumped into silence.

"Clear this court-room!" ordered the justice, standing up until his command was obeyed.

The process took five minutes. At the end of that period none was left within the room except the officers and those within the rail, which included Broderick. No court-officer who valued his position dared to disturb Broderick.

"Now close the doors!" ordered the justice.

That took an instant more. At last, the Court said:--

"Now, Mrs. Challoner...."

Miriam's Challoner's eyes flashed fire.

"I want everybody here," she cried, "to know and understand what this man has done! He arrested my husband," she went on, her face still turned toward Murgatroyd, her eyes holding his glance; "I begged of him to set him free--he refused. He told me he could do nothing for me--could do nothing but his duty. I couldn't move him; he wouldn't budge an inch until finally I offered him money."

She paused. Peter Broderick moved a few steps nearer, gnawing his finger-nails; Thorne watched Murgatroyd closely; but Murgatroyd was unmoved. He returned Miriam's glance with interest; he gave no sign.

"... until I offered money," she repeated. "I offered him one hundred thousand dollars; he refused to take it."

"Naturally," interposed the Court.

"He refused to take it," went on Miriam, irritated by the interruption, "because he knew there was more. He demanded eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars--all I had,--to set my husband free! He took it and agreed to set him free. And now," she concluded, advancing toward Murgatroyd as though with a threat upon her tongue, "see how he has kept his word!"

"It can't be true," Shirley Bloodgood was heard to say, half aloud.

Broderick crept up close to Thorne and nudged him. The latter interpreted correctly the action.

"Let Mrs. Challoner go on," suggested Thorne; and the Court ordered Mrs. Challoner to proceed.

"That's all," said Miriam, quite close to the prosecutor now, "except what I have to say to Mr. Murgatroyd."

And now as she stood before him, her eyes glistening, her breast heaving, remembering only that she was a woman robbed of her mate, she cried:--

"I am going to make you suffer for this as you made him suffer in this court-room," and she waved her hand toward Challoner. "I'll invoke every law against you," she went on, "and if the law can't help me, I'll spend my life to make you pay for this. You made an agreement with me and you must keep it, or I will...." Suddenly she sank exhausted into the chair next to Challoner and buried her face upon the prisoner's shoulder.

"Laurie, Laurie," she sobbed in her despair. For the first time Challoner showed some feeling; he found her hand and patted it with affection for a moment.

The justice shook his head. Presently he said incredulously:--

"Mrs. Challoner, this is a terrible charge to make."

She sprang up but immediately sank back again.

"It's true, it's true," she wailed.

Shirley turned to Thorne and said feelingly:--

"The trial has been too much for her. She's overwrought."

Broderick, who overheard the remark, grinned sardonically. Turning to Thorne, he remarked:--

"I'm an expert in these matters. It's got all the earmarks of the real thing. Murgatroyd did well." And then, as one who enjoyed all the privileges of the court-room, he advanced close to the bench, and shading his mouth, while he spoke, suggested genially:--

"Your Honour, get out the Penal Code."

But the Court merely beckoned to Thorne and suggested that he take charge of his client; that the strain had been too much for her. And much as Thorne wanted to believe her story, he felt as the Court felt: that the tale was little short of preposterous.

"But--it's true," Miriam persisted to her counsel, "incredible as it may seem."

Thorne eyed her steadily for a few moments. At last, he said:--

"At any rate, it may have some effect upon the verdict." And then addressing himself to the bench, he exclaimed: "Your Honour, Mrs. Challoner assures me that this charge is absolutely true." And finally turning to Murgatroyd: "I should like to hear from Prosecutor Murgatroyd as to the truth or falsity of this?"

As the two men faced each other, Shirley once more touched Miriam's arm, and said affectionately:--

"Miriam, do you realise all that you are saying?--Look into my eyes, dear, and tell me candidly is it true?..."

"Before God, I swear it." And a moment later she added: "And he never kept his word."

"Well, Mr. Prosecutor, what have you got to say?" asked the Court, a trifle apologetically.

During the pause that immediately ensued, Miriam Challoner wondered what Murgatroyd would say; what he could say; what was left for him to say. The prosecutor stood in the centre of an open space, and looking first at Miriam, then at Thorne, and finally at the Court, he answered gravely:--

"Your Honour, I have heard the charge. I don't see that it behooves me to answer it at this time, nor indeed," bowing toward the Court, "before this tribunal. If it be a charge made in earnest--as it seems to be--then the only question that can possibly interest this Court, is whether I have done my duty toward the people of the State. The charge assumes the proportions of a bribe to free a guilty man. My answer is, I have convicted Challoner. If there was a bribe, it was a bribe that didn't work."

The Court stared with the rest. Peter Broderick gazed at Murgatroyd in open-mouthed admiration; even Miriam felt baffled unaccountably.

"Mr. Thorne," said the Court, "if this charge be made in good faith, and even assuming it to be literally true, isn't the prosecutor right? It cannot be that this charge is true; but if Mrs. Challoner claims it to be true, if you believe it to be true, her remedy, then, is to go to the Grand Jury and indict, to the legislature and impeach." He paused judicially, and added: "The fullest refutation, after all, is that the prosecutor did convict."

Thorne considered for an instant.

"I agree entirely with your Honour," he assented, bowing.

"The incident is closed," went on the Court, rising. "You have your remedy--Good afternoon!" And he left the court-room.

And still Murgatroyd stood his ground while the others stood aloof. Presently two officers seized Challoner and disappeared with him through the barred door. Graham Thorne then approached the prosecutor and exclaimed:--

"Prosecutor, we have wondered all along just what your price might be. Now we know."

"The last dollar that a woman has," sneered Peter Broderick.

And still Murgatroyd gave no sign. It was only when Shirley Bloodgood approached him and he heard the tremor in her voice that the man trembled imperceptibly.

"Mr. Murgatroyd," she declared, "I am forced to believe all that Miriam has said. Oh, Billy, Billy, it is inconceivable that you are the man that I have respected all these years! You have lost the one thing I admired most in you." Her voice broke, and turning to Miriam, she cried: "Come, Miriam, dear, we're going home."

Mrs. Challoner touched Thorne upon the arm, and said with a final look at Murgatroyd:--

"I want you to take every legal measure to indict, to impeach this man, and I want you to begin at once."

After all had gone, Murgatroyd remained for some time where they had left him, imperturbable, inscrutable, gazing doggedly into space.

XI

"I came here again, thinking perhaps you might wish to explain your action." The words came from Mrs. Challoner, who, unattended, had found her way into the prosecutor's office.

Murgatroyd quickly laid down his cigar. Doubtless he was annoyed, but in spite of himself he could not help admiring the pluck which she showed in coming directly to him; and as he came forward to meet her, he saw that it was with difficulty that she kept on her feet. For a moment they faced each other in silence, yet in the eyes of each there was a look of fearful misunderstanding. Again the woman spoke.

"What have you to say to me?"

Murgatroyd frowned, his bearing slipped off some of its deference when he retorted in a voice full of emotion:--

"What have _you_ to say to _me_?..."

The prosecutor's perfect self-possession and earnestness unnerved her for an instant.

"I--" she faltered and stopped before his scornful glance.

"Yes, you, Mrs. Challoner. Do you recall our compact? Your silence was the essence of it. Why did you break it?"

Miriam Challoner checked a wild desire to laugh hysterically.

"But you broke it first!"

Murgatroyd smiled.

"How?"

The woman looked steadily at him.

"By this conviction!"

"What was our compact?" he asked sternly.

Miriam's courage was returning; it was with an indignant tone that she replied:--

"That you should set my husband free!"

Murgatroyd tapped the table with his hand.

"And have I failed as yet?"

"Yes," she answered fiercely. "You have convicted him."

Murgatroyd drew his head slightly to one side; pursed up his lips; drew his brows together; and narrowed his eyes before he spoke:--

"Did you assume for an instant, Mrs. Challoner, that I was such a bungler as to release your husband at the first trial--for all the world to know--to suspect? When I said to you that I would set your husband free, did I say--_when_?"

Of the scene that followed Miriam Challoner never retained a very clear impression. She remembered that at first, as if in a trance, she kept repeating his last word, while by degrees its meaning stole in upon her; then of a sensation of being about to faint through mere excess of joy. Suddenly the thought of her temerity flashed through her brain--the enormity of the thing she had done; and she would have gone on her knees at his feet had he not caught her in time. Quickly recovering, she looked up at him. Somehow his face seemed to hold little resentment now--too little, in fact, to suit her surprising desire to humble herself in his sight.

"After all, she's rather a fool of a woman," his expression had plainly said to her overwrought senses, "and I will spare her." And yet she craved so to hear words of pardon from his lips, that she broke out almost breathlessly:--

"You will forgive me--you must.... I have done you an unutterable injury, I know." She stopped, and then with a sudden lapse to her old air of fear: "Oh, but what will happen now--what will happen to Laurie? I have failed you; you have the right to ..."

Once more cold and indifferent, Murgatroyd looked out of the window, though he interrupted her last words by saying frigidly:--

"When I make agreements, Mrs. Challoner, I keep them. You may be sure that I shall keep this one."

Still awed in a measure by his masterful personality, but with joy in her heart, Miriam Challoner started to leave the office.

With a gesture Murgatroyd checked her quickly.

"Mrs. Challoner," he said with reproof still lingering in his voice, "there is no necessity henceforth for personal interviews. In the future if you have anything to say to me, kindly let it come through your counsel, Mr. Thorne. It is much better so--much safer. I prefer to deal with him only."

Miriam bowed acquiescence.

Directly on leaving him Miriam Challoner went to Thorne's office. It was in accordance with her promise to aid him in formulating the charges which he was preparing against the prosecutor on her behalf. These charges were for the legislature and the Grand Jury: on the one hand, impeachment; on the other, indictment. Now whether the accusation had been true or false mattered little to Thorne. On the whole, perhaps, he was inclined to disbelief; but Broderick, his colleague in the organisation, was by no means of that opinion. In any event, since it came from such an authoritative source--the lips of Mrs. Challoner--it was a charge that possessed merit, inasmuch as it would injure Murgatroyd--and Thorne was not slow to recognise that. In consequence, then, there was, unmistakably, a note of gratification in the words with which he greeted Mrs. Challoner that afternoon in his office.

"Here it is--in the form of an affidavit--just what you told me, Mrs. Challoner. Please read it."

Trembling slightly while searching her mind for some clever way in which she might express her change of plan, Miriam Challoner slowly read the document. Nothing was left out, nothing exaggerated, and without a word she returned it.

"Will you sign here, please?"

There was no time to arrange any idea she may have had for new tactics: it was Thorne's voice that was insisting; it was Thorne who was holding a pen for her and indicating the correct place for her signature. And with a violent effort, Mrs. Challoner braced herself for the first lie in her life.

"It's not true. I cannot sign it."

Thorne started back. Instantly he was spluttering his annoyance at what he considered merely a woman's whim.

"Not true! Why only a short time ago you declared it was true."

"So it was--but only in a way," she said laboriously. Her face burned and paled. "I tried to bribe him, but----"

"Bribe him! How?..."

"With the money--the money I had left," she replied cautiously.

"What have you left?" he ventured.

Curiously enough, Mrs. Challoner found herself taking a certain amount of satisfaction in telling her lawyer what now was unquestionably true.

"My home--only."

"But that's mortgaged, I understand?" There was more than idle curiosity in the speaker's eyes.

"Yes. But there's an equity of about twenty or twenty-five thousand," she explained.

"And you tried to bribe Murgatroyd with twenty thousand dollars?"

There was no answer; and interpreting her silence as assent, he went on persistently:--

"And he refused?"

Miriam was very white now.

"He did."

"I should think so," returned Thorne. "Two hundred and fifty would be more like Murgatroyd's price--if he can be bought."

"No, he cannot be bought," Miriam ventured with perhaps a trifle more confidence in her tone than Mr. Thorne liked; and then she added, in a changed voice: "I want you, please, to retract this story. I want to take it all back. I was unstrung, I----"

"I will retract nothing," he cut in rudely. "Not a thing. Leave it as it is. If you begin to retract you'll get yourself in trouble. If Murgatroyd desires to make a move, let him...."

And with a promise to that effect, a hurried acknowledgment with an inclination of the head that she accepted his words as ending her interview, she left the office, leaving him far from certain that Peter Broderick's appraisement of Murgatroyd's character was not a correct one.

That night when the papers came out, people read them in anger and dismay; by the next morning they merely laughed; likewise the Court.

"If he were bribed," said public comment, "it was a bribe that didn't work."

And Murgatroyd, submitting to interview after interview, reiterated over and over again to the reporters:--

"I point with pride, gentlemen, to the conviction of Lawrence Challoner. That's all I have to say."

The fiasco had helped Murgatroyd infinitely more than it had hurt him, Thorne felt in his inmost soul. For once the masses refused to believe what on its face appeared to be true.

* * * * *

One evening a few weeks later, while Murgatroyd was dressing to dine at his club, as was his custom nearly every night, his servant handed him a note which the bearer had said was to be delivered immediately. It was but seldom that a square white envelope came at this time, and with a pardonable look of surprise and curiosity on his face Murgatroyd opened it and read:

"I must see you. Will you come to the house to-night?

"S. H. B."

An hour more, and he was in Mrs. Bloodgood's drawing-room, waiting more nervously than he would have cared to acknowledge to himself for the daughter of the house to appear. It was the first time that she had ever sent for him to go to her, and he was conscious of some degree of anxiety as to her motive. Clever lawyer though he was, he dreaded her catechising, particularly so, because he knew that whether she acknowledged it to herself or not, that it was at her instigation that he had adopted the role which, with or without her approval, he was now determined to play through to the end. The sound of a light step on the threshold of the room checked his disturbing speculations, and he looked up to see Shirley Bloodgood entering the room. As usual she did not permit him to open the conversation after the preliminary courtesies of greeting between them.

"Something very urgent made me send for you, Mr. Murgatroyd," she began, but her lips trembled so that she stopped abruptly after adding: "I want to talk with you."

An instinct told Murgatroyd that it would be a grievous mistake not to accept without a protesting word the note of aloofness, the desire to avoid any suggestion of former intimacy that was in her tone. Rightly he told himself that the slightest advances on his part would result in adding to her distress; that however much he would like to break down the barrier that had arisen between them, he must bide his time and trust to her emotional nature to accomplish that. And he was not mistaken, for presently an impulse to speak her mind at any cost took possession of her, and she burst forth:--

"Billy, why did you take this money? Why?..."

Carried away by the tender accents with which she pronounced his name, Murgatroyd essayed to speak, but she interrupted him.

"Don't"--covering her ears with her hands--"don't tell me! I know you did it--because I--I--oh, why did you listen to me! I thought I knew what I was talking about," she went on, while he sought control of himself by looking away from her; "but I knew nothing of conditions; of men. I thought that a man--that you could accomplish anything you really wanted to do. But you were right. There are impossibilities. I understand now--now that it's too late. I have had my lesson. Only a few months ago you were honest, and now you are corrupt, and I alone am responsible!"

By the time she had finished speaking Murgatroyd had become as imperturbable as he had been at the trial, and there was only a hint of tenderness in the reassuring words that he now uttered.

"You must not blame yourself--" he was neither admitting nor denying the impeachment--"for anything I may have done."

"But I do, I do," she cried bitterly. "And you must blame me. I always thought Adam was a coward to cast the blame on Eve. But now my sympathies are with him--the woman was to blame then--I am to blame now. I gave you of the apple, and you--Oh, there would have been no apple--nothing but Eden if I had only listened to you and you had closed your ears to me."

"Eden," he said wistfully. "Yes, but hardly the Eden you cared for."

Abruptly her mood changed. She lost all semblance of calm, and her voice rang with a scorn that, before she ceased, seemed to include him as well as herself.

"What do I care for success or failure! I could cut my tongue out for telling you that my father was a failure. A failure! Why, I know that not only was he not a failure, but that he was really great! A man in the highest sense of the word--and that's all I want you to be. I don't care an iota that you should be a senator--I don't want you to be a senator. I have sent for you to-night to tell you so--to stop for good and all the thing I set in motion." She was silent for an instant; and then suddenly with a quick return to gentleness, and with appeal in her eyes, she murmured: "I want you to come back--come back."

In turn he murmured words that sounded to her like "to you."

Shirley shook her head as though that were a thing out of the question.

"No, to your honest self," she said earnestly but kindly. "To the Billy Murgatroyd that was."

For a moment they looked steadily into each other's eyes. From the time of Miriam's exposure of him in the court-room there had never been any admission, any concession on Murgatroyd's part. Nor was there any now; but unknown to himself, there was an air of appeal, not wholly free from anxiety even, for her face was again showing signs of hardness as he spoke:--

"I can hardly do that. I cannot stop. And if I should--where is the inducement? You have no apple to offer me; you are beyond my reach."

And as if to disprove his own words, an impulse of adoration, too powerful to be checked, seized him, and he caught her hand and pressed it.

A brief moment only Shirley allowed it to rest in his, then slowly withdrew it; and her action told him plainer than words that there was to be nothing further between them--she was through with him--she must despise him. As an evangelist, as the good friend she had sent for him, but as lovers--no, that was all over. And yet, had she faltered once, had she but opened her arms to him, if only for the last time, Murgatroyd could not tell what he would have done. In all probability he would have suffered exile--sackcloth and ashes for his huge misdeed.

And the girl! Shirley felt, knew that there could be no compromise. Murgatroyd must purge himself, even though it involved a lifetime of shame. And after he had yielded up his shameless gains, what then? Shirley did not know--she could not tell. But it was not given to Murgatroyd to know that he was the subject of her perplexities; nor could he read, as he should have, any hope in the words which she now spoke:--

"And if I am out of your reach--it's your own fault. If you had been half the man I thought, you would never have listened to me. But you never cared for me, even though you said so," Shirley said, casting her eyes down, not daring to look him in the face. "What you did, you did for yourself and not for me. You were weak from the start. Any man who would surrender his honesty even for a woman is not a man. I see now that I ought not to have sent for you. I take back everything I have said." She paused, and then concluded with a little shake of the head:--

"I wouldn't marry you now if you were the last man on earth!"

Both rose to their feet. Habit, perhaps, rather than any regret for her words, induced her to dismiss him with a tender expression on her face. And Murgatroyd bowed low over the hand she offered him, pressed it and without a word of protest went out of the room. With his departure went out the last glimmer of hope that he would ever return to his better self. Nothing could stop him now. As for Shirley? The moment the door closed on him she sank with a moan into a chair.

* * * * *

Thorne took an appeal from the verdict of conviction. He had been careful to take exception to each bit of questionable evidence.