“How do you think I felt, Jellison,” McCormick went on swiftly, “when I saw the label on the wrappers around those notes? The Metropolis Bank, of New York, Harlem Branch. Your bank, Jellison, and—my brother’s!”
The black-browed man gave a sudden start, and a look of amazed incredulity leaped into his eyes.
“Yes, my brother’s,” Archie repeated. “You didn’t know that I was a brother of the man you ruined and sent to prison, did you? You didn’t know that I had sworn to ferret out the man who was responsible for his disgrace and bring him to justice, if it took all my life. You played your cards cleverly. The evidence you faked deceived even the judge who tried the case. You didn’t neglect a single step to throw the blame from your guilty shoulders to those of an innocent man. I wonder if you’ve ever thought since then about that life you ruined, that reputation you blackened beyond repair. But, thank God, I’ve found you out! All your devilish plotting has come to nothing. Jim will be cleared, and you’ll have a taste of Sing Sing yourself. I hope you’ll like it.”
McCormick’s face was hard and relentless. He loved his older brother better than any one else in the world. The sight of Jim’s agony and disgrace had made him suffer torments. The man’s life had been almost ruined by the fiendish ingenuity of Andrew Jellison.
Released from prison some six months before, Jim McCormick had done his best to live a new life, but the stigma of the ex-convict clung to him wherever he went. No one would trust him. He drifted from place to place, always dropping lower in the social scale, until at last Dick Merriwell had found him and, learning his story, sent him to his brother Frank, in the hopes that the latter might do something toward clearing his name and finding out the real criminal.
It was small wonder, therefore, that Archie felt a bitter, relentless hatred for the man before him and was determined to mete out to him a full measure of justice.
Jellison seemed to read this in the clear, cold eyes of the younger man. He was in a desperate position from which there seemed no possible escape. Unconsciously he drew one hand across his sweat-stained forehead.
“I suppose you wonder why I didn’t nab you this morning,” Archie continued presently. “I wasn’t sure of you. I didn’t know your first name nor what you looked like. I couldn’t afford to make any mistake, so I went to Middleberry and wired my brother for a full description. It came all right, and I was the happiest fellow alive.”
The bank cashier moistened his dry lips.
“I wonder you said nothing to your friends,” he said, in a voice which held a ring of attempted bravado. “They would have kept me here. How did you know I wouldn’t get away before you came back?”