“So was I,” said little Purdick, and his eyes were narrowing curiously. Then came the next question: “Was your father the general manager of the steel works there?”
“Not at first. But he was before we left to go and live in Chicago.”
It was all out now. Ollie’s father—and this girl’s—was the man whom his father’s fellow laborers had said was responsible for the loose platform and the broken railing in the open-hearth furnace house, and so, indirectly, at least, responsible for the death which had left two orphans to fight their way as best they could with the bread-winner gone. And it was McKnight money he had been living on!
Purdick never knew afterward how he managed to keep on talking to the girl after this horrible revelation had battered its way into his brain. The thing he remembered most clearly was the tremendous feeling of relief he had when Ollie came up with half a dozen of the fellows from his fraternity house, and he—Purdick—was able to slip aside and, as you might say, efface himself. One thing, and only one, was clear in his mind; he must never spend another penny of the money, and what he had already spent must be paid back. From the way he looked at it, it was blood-money—nothing more or less.
Fifteen minutes later Larry found his room-mate at the stairhead, quietly making his escape.
“Making a sneak, are you?” said Larry, clapping him on the shoulder. “Well, so am I, if anybody should ask you. Got to go home and pack in a hurry. It’s ‘Westward Ho!’ for us on the early morning train.”
“You and Dick, you mean?”
“M-m, yes; for Dick and me.”
“I’ll help you pack,” Purdick offered, and not another word was said until Larry was turning on the lights in the room they had been sharing for something like half a year. Then it was that Purdick, dropping wearily into a chair, said his say.
“I’m not blaming you any, Larry; I guess you’ve been doing only what you had to do. But if you had told me at first that it was Ollie McKnight who was putting up the money for me, I’d have died before I would have taken it.”