"George, I don't know how to take this tone from you. I've always found you strictly honorable. Your word has always been your bond. And your friendship has been beyond price. You can't have anything very dreadful to confess, I imagine. It can't be money, because you just told me about the investments."
"I wish to God it were," said Harnash bitterly. "I'd rather be branded as a thief than--"
A dawning suspicion flashed into Beekman's mind. Why had he never thought of it before? His face changed.
"What is it?" he demanded. "Speak out."
"You wondered how you were shanghaied and I was not. Well, I--I did it."
"What?"
"I had it done, that is."
"Ah, and Woywod?"
"He was a boyhood friend. He would do anything for me. It was through him."
"By God!" cried Beekman passionately, forgetting everything else as his life on that hell ship came back to him, as he recalled the brutal bullying and the miseries that he and all the other men had endured, and that last terrible scene in the cabin, which had stained his hands with the blood of man; and that it was in self-defense did not make the stain any less vivid. "You--my friend--the best man--at my wedding!"