“I must confess that I think some of the blame for what followed should be laid at my door. I had been patient with the kid and loaned him money until I came to the conclusion that it was like throwing it down a well. Then I got fond of a certain person”—he paused a moment and smiled at Julie—“and I needed all my money to entertain her properly; so I quit loaning.
“I don’t know whether to tell you the rest or not; it isn’t what I would want anyone else to tell you, even about a perfect stranger, but I think it is right you should know everything if you know anything.”
The girl nodded without speaking.
“In the loan-shark office was a very pretty little girl, and Lester thought he fell in love with her. She had a red-headed cousin and an admirer named Smithy Caldwell, who belonged to a tough gang on the South Side.
“The girl was fond of Lester for a while, but she wouldn’t forsake her friends as he ordered her to, and they quarreled. Her name was Mary, and after the fuss the three friends, together with the loan-shark people, played Lester for a gilt-edged 298 idiot, basing their operations on alleged facts concerning Mary. In reality Smithy Caldwell had married her in the meantime, and Lester eventually proved he had always treated her honorably, though now she denied it.”
“Poor, innocent boy in the hands of those blood-suckers!” cried Juliet compassionately.
“Naturally driven frantic by the fear of exposure and the resulting disgrace of the whole family, the boy lost his head and tried to buy his persecutors off. And to do this he took money out of the safe. But what’s the use of prolonging the agony? Finally he forged my father’s signature, and when the check came back from the bank he tried to ’fix’ the books, and got caught.
“I’ll pass over everything that followed, except to say that the disgrace did not become public. But it broke father’s heart and hastened his death. When that occurred it was found that practically all the estate had come to me, and this fellow Smithy Caldwell threatened to disclose the forgery if I did not buy him off.
“That scared me, because I was now the head of the family, and I handed over two thousand dollars. Then I came West, and thought the whole matter was buried, until Caldwell turned up at the Bar T that night for supper. 299
“That’s about all. You see, it’s an ugly story, and it paints Lester pretty black. But I’ve thought the thing over a great many times, and can’t blame him very much, after all, for it really was the result of my father’s stern and narrow policy. The boy was in his most impressionable years, and was left to face the music alone. It seemed to age him mightily.”