Corbin looked at him in dull astonishment. “Not a cent, of course; I thought I told you that. But that weren't his fault, for he never had anything, and owed me money. In fact,” he added gloomily, “it was because I hadn't any more to give him—havin' sold my watch for grub—that he quo'lled with me that day, and up and called me a 'sneakin' Yankee hound.' I told you he drove me hard.”
The Colonel coughed slightly and resumed his jaunty manner. “And the—er—mother was, of course, grateful and satisfied?”
“Well, no,—not exactly.” He stopped again and took up his letters once more, sorted and arranged them as if to play out his unfinished but hopeless hand, and drawing out another, laid it before the Colonel. “You see, this Mrs. Jeffcourt, after a time, reckoned she ought to have MORE money than I sent her, and wrote saying that she had always understood from her son (he that never wrote but once a year, remember) that this claim of ours (that she never knew of, you know) was paying much more than I sent her—and she wanted a return of accounts and papers, or she'd write to some lawyer, mighty quick. Well, I reckoned that all this was naturally in the line of my trouble, and I DID manage to scrape together fifty dollars more for two months and sent it. But that didn't seem to satisfy her—as you see.” He dealt Colonel Starbottle another letter from his baleful hand with an unchanged face. “When I got that,—well, I just up and told her the whole thing. I sent her the account of the fight from the newspapers, and told her as how her son was the Frisbee that was my pardner, and how he never had a cent in the world—but how I'd got that idea to help her, and was willing to carry it out as long as I could.”
“Did you keep a copy of that letter?” asked the Colonel, straitening his mask-like mouth.
“No,” said Corbin moodily. “What was the good? I know'd she'd got the letter,—and she did,—for that is what she wrote back.” He laid another letter before the Colonel, who hastily read a few lines and then brought his fat white hand violently on the desk.
“Why, d—n it all, sir, this is BLACKMAIL! As infamous a case of threatening and chantage as I ever heard of.”
“Well,” said Corbin, dejectedly, “I don't know. You see she allows that I murdered Frisbee to get hold of his claim, and that I'm trying to buy her off, and that if I don't come down with twenty thousand dollars on the nail, and notes for the rest, she'll prosecute me. Well, mebbe the thing looks to her like that—mebbe you know I've got to shoulder that too. Perhaps it's all in the same line.”
Colonel Starbottle for a moment regarded Corbin critically. In spite of his chivalrous attitude towards the homicidal faculty, the Colonel was not optimistic in regard to the baser pecuniary interests of his fellow-man. It was quite on the cards that his companion might have murdered his partner to get possession of the claim. It was true that Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unrecorded and hitherto unknown responsibility that had never been even suspected, and was virtually self-imposed. But that might have been the usual one unerring blunder of criminal sagacity and forethought. It was equally true that he did not look or act like a mean murderer; but that was nothing. However, there was no evidence of these reflections in the Colonel's face. Rather he suddenly beamed with an excess of politeness. “Would you—er—mind, Mr. Corbin, whilst I am going over those letters again, to—er—step across to my office—and—er—bring me the copy of 'Wood's Digest' that lies on my table? It will save some time.”
The stranger rose, as if the service was part of his self-imposed trouble, and as equally hopeless with the rest, and taking his hat departed to execute the commission. As soon as he had left the building Colonel Starbottle opened the door and mysteriously beckoned the bar-keeper within.
“Do you remember anything of the killing of a man named Frisbee over in Fresno three years ago?”