"I have just thought of something," he explained hastily; "something that may throw a good bit of light on this thing. You sit right here and toast your shins. I'm going out for a little while."
He was gone for the better part of an hour, during which interval I obeyed his injunction literally, sitting before the fire and basking in its home-like warmth; making the most of the comfort of it all before I should again go forth to face an inclement world. When Whitley came in and flung himself into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth his dark eyes were blazing.
"Weyburn," he began abruptly, "what I have to tell you will stir every evil passion you've ever harbored; and yet, in decent justice to you, it must be told. Have you ever suspected that your fight for reinstatement has been deliberately handicapped, right from the beginning?"
"I have suspected it at times; yes," I returned. "But there is no proof."
"There is proof," he shot back. "By the merest chance I stumbled upon it a few minutes ago. I went out with the intention of going to Zadoc Haddon and making him tell me where he got the information that you are the desperate criminal he professes to believe you to be. While we were sitting here it struck me all at once that this thing was being helped along by some one who had an object in view. At Haddon's house the doorman told me that Haddon had an appointment with an out-of-town customer and had gone to the hotel to keep it; and rather than wait, I went over to the Hamilton House to try to find my man. I didn't find him; but in the lobby of the hotel somebody found me. As I was turning away from the desk after asking for Haddon, a heavy-set young man, neatly dressed, stepped up and asked if my name was Whitley. I admitted it. Then he asked if I would give him a few minutes, and we went aside to sit facing each other in a couple of the lobby chairs. Weyburn, that young man is in the employ of a private detective agency, and what he wished to do, and did do, was to warn me that I was sheltering a dangerous criminal in my house!"
In a flash all the small mysteries that had been befogging me for months made themselves transparently clear: the man I had called a traveling salesman who had followed me from the prison gates to the scene of my first humble effort; the memorandum Chief Callahan had consulted; the "outfit" that was to be notified when my next destination was known; the second appearance of the "salesman" on the train at the capital, and his disappearance when he had learned from the conductor the name of my next stopping-place; and after this the long series of hitherto unaccountable blacklistings. My mouth was dry, but I contrived to tell Whitley to go on.
"I will," he conceded; "but you must promise me to control yourself. Naturally, my first impulse, when this scamp began on me, was to cut him off short and tell him what I thought of the despicable business to which he was lending himself. But the second thought was craftier, and I hope I may be forgiven for yielding to it. By leading him on I got the entire brutal story. It seems that the two old men upon whose complaint you were indicted knew when you were to be paroled. They profess to believe that you are a menace to society; that the prison authorities were at fault in releasing you short of the limit of your sentence. Hence, through his employers, they have set this man upon your track to see to it—I use his own words—that you do not have an opportunity to rob some one else."
I suppose I should have been driven mad with vindictive fury at this plain revelation of the true cause of most of my misfortunes, but there is a point beyond which the beaten man cannot rise to renew the fight, and I had reached and passed it. Wherefore I found myself saying, quite calmly:
"Neither Abel Geddis nor Abner Withers would spend one copper penny for any such altruistic reason as this man has given you, Whitley. Their motive is strictly selfish and personal. They are either afraid that I may go back to Glendale and try to expose them; or that I may take the shorter and surer way of balancing the account by killing them—as, at one time, I meant to."
"Oh, but my dear fellow!" Whitley protested. "In that case they would hardly take a course which was calculated to drive you to desperation!"