“Just now I am the prisoner at the bar, Mr. Dimmock, and I’m not obliged to incriminate myself,” he retorted jokingly. And at that the three who remained went out through the banker’s office together. On the sidewalk Dimmock paused for one other word; the word which had been at the bottom of his friendly approach to Sprague.
“Diana knows nothing of this?” he said.
“Nothing more than you have told her,” said Sprague.
“And that is less than nothing,” was the prompt return. After which they separated, Dimmock going up the street toward Hunniwell’s hotel, Maxwell hurrying off to the telegraph office to wire the good news to Ford, and Sprague sauntering slowly back to the Hotel Topaz, wondering if, by any hook or crook of good fortune, he should be lucky enough to find Miss Diana Carswell disengaged and willing to accord him an hour or so of an afternoon which was still young.
It was in the evening of the same day, after Maxwell had been reinstalled in his office by order of the court, and the summarily discharged staff had been reinstated, that the superintendent turned upon Sprague, who was sitting, as his evening custom was, in the easiest of the office chairs, puffing at a black cigar, and with his gaze fixed upon the disused gas chandelier marking the exact centre of the ceiling.
“How did you do it, Calvin?” came the abrupt demand from Maxwell’s corner. “Did you really have any evidence against Miss Diana’s step-father and her uncle?”
The big-bodied man from Washington chuckled softly.
“Oh, yes; I had the evidence. There was a hitch between Watson and Dimmock, and they were both of them injudicious enough to send notes back and forth; notes which, by the help of two good friends of yours and mine, were intercepted, carefully copied, the originals preserved, and the copies forwarded. It was a little off-color, but when you are fighting the devil you can’t always stop to pick your weapons. Watson was to have a Federal judgeship, and Big Money was to see that he got it. The hitch came in reference to Watson’s leaving town. He was afraid to go; afraid of public sentiment; and Dimmock was holding him on the rack. I don’t know whether the evidence of the letters would have held in an ordinary court, but I do know that I had Judge Walsh on my side.”
Maxwell whirled around in his chair.
“Sprague, did those letters incriminate Dimmock and Miss Diana’s uncle?”