At the voice, Mrs. Sturgis smothered a scream; turned; stared.
Through the portières that closed off the hall stepped Curtis Lauderdale, led from the taxi by the driver thereof in answer to Pape’s signal from the window.
Verily an apparition did he look to the four who had accepted the report of his death. Mrs. Sturgis, with hands grasping behind her, was backing as though from a ghost. The little jurist did not move, but all the apple color had departed his cheeks. Irene’s red-rouged lips could not pale, but at least her mouth was agape. Harford stiffened, as though preparing for attack.
One on either side, Jane and Pape crossed to the latecomer and lined up the triumvirate. Accurately the blind eyes fixed on Allen. In direct address the long unheard lips began to speak.
“We meet again, Sam, my trusted counsellor and cherished friend. With your mask torn off, you look more changed to me than I possibly can to you. Oh, don’t waste time with denials! I’d need to be blinder than mustard gas could make me not to see you as you are. For years you traded upon the gullibility of my father. You persuaded him that fortune would build bigger and faster if he withheld proof of title to our Bronx estates and let the Guarantee Investors develop a property that has belonged to the Lauderdales since the grant of King James. You overcame his needs and his children’s needs with false promises of rich reward when he eventually would claim the improved acreage. And after letting him die in half-crazed poverty, with his mysterious instructions unfound and our title proofs buried with them, you advised me to raise money from the collateral heirs and institute a court fight to establish our rights. And it was you, I feel sure, who brought these heirs before the Grand Jury that indicted me for fraud just after I had sailed for Somewhere in France.”
A moment Lauderdale paused in the controlled fury of his accusation, brushed a hand across his eye-lids and moistened his lips.
“But the crookedest lane has its end, Sam Allen. My chief treasure you could not take from me—a glorious girl child born to retribution. To her aid came this real-man sample from out the West. Working together they have recovered every necessary document, even to my parent’s last will and testament. We are ready and able now to right the most grievous wrong ever perpetrated in the medium of New York real estate—to force your company to turn over a thousand acres in the heart of the Bronx and to make restitution, under your guarantee, to innocent purchasers, even if it breaks you as you would have broken——”
He was stopped by the grasp which Pape had put on his arm.
“Don’t dump all the onus on the judge, Mr. Lauderdale,” he advised. “We mustn’t forget that he is a lawyer, hence full of wriggles. Best leave his punishment to me and that more easily proved charge of the Montana Gusher oil-stock fraud. There is one among those present, to approach the subject guardedly, who is more directly responsible for the Bronx realty steal than His Honor.”
Even Jane, close as she had been to the queer questioner throughout recent developments, was startled by his statement. What sort of a lone hand was he playing?