Part 10

Again the Virginian whistled softly. "My friend," he said, "there is a little too much mystery about this matter. I am not afraid of you, because you are a rascal; no one ever had a face like you that was not a rascal. You will stick to me because you are out for the stuff, and there is no possible way to make a dollar by throwing the game. I am not afraid of any living man, if I have an opportunity to see his face before the bluff is made. You are all right; your game is to use me in making some haul that is a little too high for yourself. That is what you have been working up to, and you are a smooth operator, my friend. A greenhorn would have concluded long ago that you were a detective, but I knew a blamed sight better than that the moment you made your first lead. In the first place, you are too sharp to waste your time with any such bosh, and in the second place, it takes cash to buy detectives, and there is nobody following me with cash. Gullmore county has no kick coming to it until my final settlements are made, and there is no man treading shoe leather that knows anything about the condition of my official business except myself, and perhaps also that shrewd and mysterious guesser--yourself. So, you see, I am not standing on ceremonies with you. But here, young man, comes in a dark horse, and you want me to bet on him blindfolded. Those are not the methods of Moseby Allen. I must be let in a little deeper on this thing."

"All I want you to do," said Parks, putting his hand confidentially on the Virginian's arm, "is simply to go and see Randolph Mason, and ap-proach him in the way I tell you, and when you have done that, I will wager that you stay and explain everything to him."

Colonel Allen leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands into his pockets. "Why should I do that?" he said curtly.

"Well," murmured the little man mournfully, "one's bondsmen are entitled to some consideration; and then, there is the penitentiary. Courts have a way of sending men there for embezzlement."

"You are correct," said Allen, quietly, "and I have not time to go."

"At any rate," continued Parks, "there can be no possible danger to you. You are taking no chances. Mr. Mason is a member of the New York bar, and anything you may tell him he dare not reveal. The law would not permit him to do so if he desired. The whole matter would be kept as thoroughly inviolate as though it were made in the confessional. Your objections are all idle. You are a man in a desperate position. You are up to your waist in the quicksand, now, and, at the end of the year, it is bound to close over your head. It is folly to look up at the sky and attempt to ignore this fact. I offer to help you--not from any goodness of heart, understand, but because we can both make a stake in this thing. I need money, and you must have money,--that is the whole thing in a nutshell. Now," said Parks, rising from his chair, "what are you going to do?"

"Well," said the Virginian, drawing up his long legs and spreading out his fat hands on the table, "_Colonel Moseby Allen, of the county of Gullmore, will take five cards, if you please_."

III.

This must be the place," muttered the Virginian, stopping under the electric light and looking up at the big house on the avenue. "That fellow said I would know the place by the copper-studded door, and there it is, as certain as there are back taxes in Gullmore." With that, Colonel Moseby Allen walked up the granite steps and began to grope about in the dark door-way for the electric bell. He could find no trace of this indispensable convenience, and was beginning to lapse into a flow of half-suppressed curses, when he noticed for the first time an ancient silver knocker fastened to the middle of the door. He seized it and banged it vigorously.

The Virginian stood in the dark and waited. Finally he concluded that the noise had not been heard, and was about to repeat the signal when the door was flung suddenly open, and a tall man holding a candle in his hand loomed up in the door-way.

"I am looking," stammered the southerner, "for one Randolph Mason, an attorney-at-law."

"I am Randolph Mason," said the man, thrusting the silver candlestick out before him. "Who are you, sir?"

"My name is Allen," answered the southerner, "Moseby Allen, of Gullmore county, West Virginia."

"A Virginian," said Mason, "what evil circumstance brings you here?"

Then Allen remembered the instructions which Parks had given him so minutely. He took off his hat and passed his hand across his forehead. "Well," he said, "I suppose the same thing that brings the others. We get in and plunge along just as far as we can. Then Fate shuts down the lid of her trap, and we have either to drop off the bridge or come here."

"Come in," said Mason. Then he turned abruptly and walked down the hall-way. The southerner followed, impressed by this man's individuality. Allen had pushed his way through life with bluff and bluster, and like that one in the scriptural writings, "neither feared God nor regarded man." His unlimited assurance had never failed him before any of high or low degree, and to be impressed with the power of any man was to him strange and uncomfortable.

Mason turned into his library and placed the candlestick on a table in the centre of the floor. Then he drew up two chairs and sat down in one of them motioning Allen to the other on the opposite side of the table. The room was long and empty, except for the rows of heavy book-cases standing back in the darkness. The floor was bare, and there was no furniture of any kind whatever, except the great table and the ancient high-back chairs. There was no light but the candle standing high in its silver candlestick.

"Sir," said Mason, when the Virginian had seated himself, "which do you seek to evade, punishment or dishonor?"

The Virginian turned round, put his elbows on the table, and looked squarely across at his questioner. "I am not fool enough to care for the bark," he answered, "provided the dog's teeth are muzzled."

"It is well," said Mason, slowly, "there is often difficulty in dealing with double problems, where both disgrace and punishment are sought to be evaded. Where there is but one difficulty to face, it can usually be handled with ease. What others are involved in your matter?"

"No others," answered the Virginian; "I am seeking only to save myself."

"From the law only," continued Mason, "or does private vengeance join with it?"

"From the law only," answered Allen.

"Let me hear it all," said Mason.

"Well," said the Virginian, shifting uneasily in his chair, "my affairs are in a very bad way, and every attempt that I have made to remedy them has resulted only in disaster. I am walking, with my hands tied, straight into the penitentiary, unless some miracle can be performed in my favor. Everything has gone dead against me from my first fool move. Four years ago I was elected sheriff of Gullmore county in the State of West Virginia. I was of course required by law to give a large bond. This I had much difficulty in doing, for the reason that I have no estate whatever. Finally I induced my brother and my father, who is a very old man, to mortgage their property and thereby secured the requisite bond. I entered upon the duties of my office, and assumed entire control of the revenues of the county. For a time I managed them carefully and kept my private business apart from that of the county. But I had never been accustomed to strict business methods, and I soon found it most difficult to confine myself to them. Little by little I began to lapse into my old habit of carelessness. I neglected to keep up the settlements, and permitted the official business to become intermixed with my private accounts. The result was that I awoke one morning to find that I owed the county of Gullmore ten thousand dollars. I began at once to calculate the possibility of my being able to meet this deficit before the expiration of my term of office, and soon found that by no possible means would I be able to raise this amount out of the remaining fees. My gambling instincts at once asserted themselves. I took five thousand dollars, went to Lexington, and began to play the races in a vain, reckless hope that I might win enough to square my accounts. I lost from the very start. I came back to my county and went on as before, hoping against hope that something would turn up and let me out. Of course this was the dream of an idiot, and when the opposition won at the last election, and a new sheriff was installed, and I was left but a few months within which to close up my accounts, the end which I had refused to think of arose and stared me in the face. I was now at the end of my tether, and there was nothing there but a tomb. And even that way was not open. If I should escape the penitentiary by flight or by suicide, I would still leave my brother and my aged father to bear the entire burden of my defalcations; and when they, as my bondsmen, had paid the sum to the county, they would all be paupers."

The man paused and mopped the perspiration from his face. He was now terribly in earnest, and seemed to be realizing the gravity and the hopelessness of his crime. All his bluster and grandiloquent airs had vanished.

"Reckless and unscrupulous as I am," he went on, "I cannot bear to think of my brother's family beggars because of my wrong, or my father in his extreme old age turned out from under his own roof and driven into the poor-house, and yet it must come as certainly as the sun will rise tomorrow."

The man's voice trembled now, and the flabby muscles of his face quivered.

"In despair, I gathered up all the funds of the county remaining in my hands and hurried to this city. Here I went to the most reliable broker I could find and through him plunged into speculation. But all the devils in hell seemed to be fighting for my ruin. I was caught in that dread and unexpected crash of yesterday and lost everything. Strange to say, when I realized that my ruin was now complete, I felt a kind of exhilaration,--such, I presume, as is said to come to men when they are about to be executed. Standing in the very gaping jaws of ruin, I have to-day been facetious, even merry. Now, in the full glare of this horrible matter, I scarcely remember what I have been doing, or how I came to be here, except that this morning in Wall Street I heard some one speak of your ability, and I hunted up your address and came without any well defined plan, and, if you will pardon me, I will add that it was also without any hope."

The man stopped and seemed to settle back in his chair in a great heap.

Randolph Mason arose and stood looking down at the Virginian.

"Sir," said Mason, "none are ever utterly lost but the weak. Answer my question."

The Virginian pulled himself together and looked up.

"Is there any large fund," continued Mason, "in the hands of the officers of your county?"

"My successor," said Allen, "has just collected the amount of a levy ordered by the county court for the purpose of paying the remainder due on the court-house. He now has that fund in his hands."

"When was the building erected?" said Mason.

"It was built during the last year of my term of office, and paid for in part out of levies ordered while I was active sheriff. When my successor came in there still remained due the contractors on the work some thirty thousand dollars. A levy was ordered by the court shortly before my term expired, but the collection of this levy fell to the coming officer, so this money is not in my hands, although all the business up to this time has been managed by me, and the other payments on the building made from time to time out of moneys in my hands, and I have been the chief manager of the entire work and know more about it than any one else. The new sheriff came into my office a few days ago to inquire how he was to dispose of this money."

Mason sat down abruptly. "Sir," he said almost bitterly, "there is not enough difficulty in your matter to bother the cheapest intriguer in Kings county. I had hoped that yours was a problem of some gravity."

"I see," said the Virginian, sarcastically, "I am to rob the sheriff of this money in such a manner that it won't be known who received it, and square my accounts. That would be very easy indeed. I would have only to kill three men and break a bank. Yes, that would be very easy. You might as well tell me to have blue eyes."

"Sir," said Randolph Mason, slowly, "you are the worst prophet unhung."

"Well," continued the man, "there can be no other way, If it were turned over to me in my official capacity what good would it do? My bondsmen would be responsible for it. I would then have it to account for, and what difference, in God's name, can it make whether I am sent to the penitentiary for stealing money which I have already used, or for stealing this money? It all belongs to the county. It is two times six one way, and six times two the other way."

"Sir," said Mason, "I retract my former statement in regard to your strong point. Let me insist that you devote your time to prophecy. Your reasoning is atrocious."

"I am wasting my time here," muttered the Virginian, "there is no way out of it."

Randolph Mason turned upon the man. "Are you afraid of courts?" he growled.

"No," said the southerner, "I am afraid of nothing but the penitentiary."

"Then," said Mason, leaning over on the table, "listen to me, and you will never see the shadow of it."

IV.

I suppose you are right about that," said Jacob Wade, the newly elected sheriff of Gullmore county, as he and Colonel Moseby Allen sat in the office of that shrewd and courteous official. "I suppose it makes no difference which one of us takes this money and pays the contractors,--we are both under good bonds, you know."

"Certainly, Wade, certainly," put in the Colonel, "your bond is as good as they can be made in Gullmore county, and I mean no disrespect to the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe when I assert that the whole kingdom of heaven could not give a better bond than I have. You are right, Wade; you are always right; you are away ahead of the ringleaders of your party. I don't mind if I do say so. Of course, I am on the other side, but it was miraculous, I tell you, the way you swung your forces into line in the last election. By all the limping gods of the calendar, we could not touch you!" Colonel Moseby Allen leaned over and patted his companion on the shoulder. "You are a sly dog, Wade," he continued. "If it had not been for you we would have beaten the bluebells of Scotland out of the soft-headed farmers who were trying to run your party. I told the boys you would pull the whole ticket over with you, but they did n't believe me. Next time they will have more regard for the opinion of Moseby Allen of Gull-more." The Colonel burst out into a great roar of laughter, and brought his fat hand down heavily on his knee.

Jacob Wade, the new sheriff, was a cadaverous-looking countryman, with a face that indicated honesty and egotism. He had come up from a farm, and had but little knowledge of business methods in general, and no idea of how the duties of his office should be properly performed. He puffed up visibly under the bald flattery of Allen, and took it all in like a sponge.

"Well," said Wade, "I suppose the boys did sort of expect me to help them over, and I guess I did. I have been getting ready to run for a long time, and I aint been doing no fool things. When the Farmers Alliance people was organizing, I just stayed close home and sawed wood, and when the county was all stirred up about that there dog tax, I kept my mouth shut, and never said nothing."

"That 's what you did, Wade," continued the Colonel, rubbing his hands; "you are too smooth to get yourself mixed up with a lot of new-fangled notions that would brand you all over the whole county as a crank. What a man wants in order to run for the office of sheriff is a reputation for being a square, solid, substantial business man, and that is what you had, Wade, and besides that you were a smooth, shrewd, far-sighted, machine politician."

Jacob Wade flushed and grew pompous under this eloquent recital of his alleged virtues. Allen was handling his man with skill. He was a natural judge of men, and possessed in no little degree the rare ability of knowing how to approach the individual in order to gain his confidence and goodwill.

"No," he went on, "I am not partisan enough to prevent me from appreciating a good clearheaded politician, no matter what his party affiliations may be. I am as firm and true to my principles as any of those high up in the affairs of state. I have been honored by my party time and again in the history of this commonwealth, and have defended and supported her policies on the stump, and in the halls of legislation, and I know a smooth man when I see him, and I honor him, and stick to him out of pure love for his intelligence and genius."

The Colonel arose. He now felt that his man was in the proper humor to give ready assent to the proposition which he had made, and he turned back to it with careless indifference.

"Now, Jacob," he said lowering his voice, "this is not all talk. You are a new officer, and I am an old one. I am familiar with all the routine business of the sheriffalty, and I am ready and willing and anxious to give all the information that can be of any benefit to you, and to do any and everything in my power to make your term of office as pleasant and profitable as it can be made. I am wholly and utterly at your service, and want you to feel that you are more than welcome to command me in any manner you see fit. By the way, here is this matter that we were just discussing. I am perfectly familiar with all that business. I looked after the building for the county, collected all the previous levies, and know all about the contracts with the builders--just what is due each one and just how the settlements are to be made,--and I am willing to take charge of this fund and settle the thing up. I suppose legally it is my duty to attend to this work, as it is in the nature of unfinished business of my term, but I could have shifted the whole thing over on you and gotten out of the trouble of making the final settlements with the contractors. The levy was ordered during my term, but has been collected by you, and on that ground I could have washed my hands of the troublesome matter if I had been disposed to be ugly. But I am not that kind of a man, Wade; I am willing to shoulder my lawful duties, and wind this thing up and leave your office clear and free from any old matters."

Jacob Wade, sheriff of Gullmore county, was now thoroughly convinced of two things. First, that he himself was a shrewd politician, with an intellect of almost colossal proportions, and second, that Colonel Moseby Allen was a great and good man, who was offering to do him a service out of sheer kindness of heart.

He arose and seized Allen's hand. "I am obliged to you, Colonel, greatly obliged to you," he said; "I don't know much about these matters yet, and it will save me a deal of trouble if you will allow me to turn this thing over to you, and let you settle it up. I reckon from the standpoint of law it is a part of your old business as sheriff."

"Yes," answered Allen, smiling broadly, "I reckon it is, and I reckon I ought n't to shirk it."

"All right," said Wade, turning to leave the office, "I 'll just hand the whole thing over to you in the morning." Then he went out.

The ex-sheriff closed the door, sat down in his chair, and put his feet on the table. "Well, Moseby, my boy," he said, "that was dead easy. The Honorable Jacob Wade is certainly the most irresponsible idiot west of the Alleghany mountains. He ought to have a committee,--yes, he ought to have two committees, one to run him, and one to run his business." Then he rubbed his hands gleefully. "It is working like a greased clock," he chuckled, "and by the grace of God and the Continental Congress, when this funeral procession does finally start, it wont be Colonel Moseby Allen of the county of Gullmore who will occupy the hearse."

V.

The inhabitants of the city could never imagine the vast interest aroused in the county of Gullmore by the trial of Colonel Moseby Allen for embezzlement. In all their quiet lives the good citizens had not been treated to such a sweeping tidal wave of excitement. The annual visits of the "greatest show on earth" were scarcely able to fan the interests of the countrymen into such a flame. The news of Allen's arrest had spread through the country like wildfire. Men had talked of nothing else from the moment this startling information had come to their ears. The crowds on Saturday afternoons at the country store had constituted themselves courts of first and last resort, and had passed on the matter of the ex-sheriff's guilt at great length and with great show of learning. The village blacksmith had delivered ponderous opinions while he shod the traveller's horse; and the ubiquitous justice of the peace had demonstrated time and again with huge solemnity that Moseby Allen was a great criminal, and by no possible means could be saved from conviction. It was the general belief that the ex-sheriff would not stand trial; that he would by some means escape from the jail where he was confined. So firm-rooted had this conviction become that the great crowd gathered in the little county seat on the day fixed for the trial were considerably astonished when they saw the ex-sheriff sitting in the dock. In the evening after the first day of the trial, in which certain wholly unexpected things had come to pass, the crowd gathered on the porch of the country hotel were fairly revelling in the huge sensation.

Duncan Hatfield, a long ungainly mountaineer, wearing a red hunting-shirt and a pair of blue jeans trousers, was evidently the Sir-Oracle of the occasion.

"I tell you, boys," he was saying, "old Moseby aint got no more show than a calliker apron in a brush fire. Why he jest laid down and give up; jest naturally lopped his ears and give up like a whipped dog."

"Yes," put in an old farmer who was standing a little back in the crowd, "I reckon nobody calkerlated on jest sich a fizzle."

"When he come into court this mornin'," continued the Oracle, "with that there young lawyer man Edwards, I poked Lum Bozier in the side, and told him to keep his eye skinned, and he would see the fur fly, because I knowed that Sam Lynch, the prosecutin' attorney, allowed to go fer old Moseby, and Sam is a fire-eater, so he is, and he aint afraid of nuthin that walks on legs. But, Jerusalem! it war the tamest show that ever come to this yer town. Edwards jest sot down and lopped over like a weed, and Sam he begun, and he showed up how old Moseby had planned this here thing, and how he had lied to Jake Wade all the way through, and jest how he got that there money, and what an everlasting old rascal he was, and there sot Edwards, and he never asked no questions, and he never paid no attention to nuthin."

"Did n't the lawyer feller do nuthin at all, Dunk?" enquired one of the audience, who had evidently suffered the great misfortune of being absent from the trial.

"No," answered the Oracle, with a bovine sneer, "he never did nothin till late this evenin. Then he untangled his legs and got up and said somethin to the jedge about havin to let old Moseby Allen go, cause what he had done was n't no crime.

"Then you ought to a heard Sam. He jest naturally took the roof off; he sailed into old Moseby. He called him nine different kinds of horse-thieves, and when he got through, I could see old Ampe Props noddin his head back thar in the jury-box, and then I knowed that it were all up with Colonel Moseby Allen, cause that jury will go the way old Ampe goes, jest like a pack of sheep."