"This is what I want. Four years ago you and your father sent me to prison for a crime that I didn't commit. Go over to that table and write and sign me my clearance—tell the bald truth and sign your name to it—and you shall have your money."
In a flash she slipped from her place on the arm of the chair and stood before me transformed into a flaming incarnation of vindictive rage. In spite of the pace she had been keeping she was still very beautiful, and her anger served to heighten that physical charm which was the keynote of her power over men.
"Oh!" she panted; "so that was what you were willing to pay for! You want a bill of health so you can go back to that little hussy in Cripple Creek! Listen to me, Bert Weyburn: you've broken the last thread. I could kill you if you couldn't serve my turn better alive than dead! I want that money. If you don't bring it here to me by ten o'clock, the Denver police are going to find out that you, the wealthy third partner in the Little Clean-Up, are the man they photographed nearly a year ago, the man whose thumb-print they took, the man who is wanted as an escaped convict who has broken his parole—No, don't speak; let me finish. For the money you are going to bring me, I'll keep still—to the police. But for the slap you've just given me.… Did you ever read that line of Congreve's about a woman scorned? You've had your last little love-scene with Polly Everton!"
I'll tell it all. This time the murder demon proved too strong for me. It was a sheer madman who sprang at her out of the depths of the arm-chair and bent her back over the little oak writing-table with his hands at her throat. She was not womanly enough to scream; instead, she fought silently and with the strength and cunning of mortal fear. Even as my fingers clutched at her for the strangling hold she twisted herself free and put the breadth of the table between us; then I found myself looking into the muzzle of a small silver-mounted revolver.
"You fool!" she gasped. "Do you think I would take any chances with you? If you should kill me, the axe would fall and find your neck, just the same! I put it in a letter to the chief of police. Get me that money before ten o'clock if you want me to stop the letter!"
I was beaten, this time not by fear of her or what she could do, but by the crushing loss I had suffered in those few mad moments. I had done the thing that no man may do and still claim that he has a single drop of gentle blood in his veins; I had laid my hands in violence upon a woman, and with murder in my heart.
Convinced now that there was no deeper depth of degradation to which I could sink, I set about the task she had given me, laboring through it like a man in a dream. To gather up such a huge sum of money after banking hours was well nigh impossible; but I compassed the end by chartering a cab and going to anybody and everybody who could by any possibility cash my checks, leaving a disgraceful trail of the bank paper in dives and gambling dens and night resorts without number—driven to this because all respectable sources were closed at that time in the evening.
Returning to the hotel only a few minutes before the critical hour, I went directly to her rooms, carrying the money in a small hand-bag that I had bought for the purpose. I found her waiting for me, gowned and hatted as if for a journey. She was standing before a mirror, dabbing her neck with a powder-puff—histronic to the last; she was showing me how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief of police.
"You got the money?" she said quietly. "I knew you would." And then with a sudden passion: "Oh, Bertie! if you weren't such a cold-blooded fish of a man!—but never mind; it's too late now."
I placed the small hand-bag on the table, pocketed the fateful letter, and backed toward the door. "If there is nothing else," I said.