“There's only one, isn't there?” he returned. “You've got a stake in that coin now. A fair share of it is yours, and I'll leave it to you to say what you want.”
Millman lighted a cigarette before he answered.
“All right!” he said, with a curious smile, as his eyes through the spiral of blue smoke from the tip of his cigarette fixed on Dave Henderson again. “All right! I'll accept that offer, Dave. And I'll take—all, or none.”
Dave Henderson drew sharply back in his chair. There was something in Millman's voice, a significance that he did not like, or quite understand, save that it denied any jocularity on Millman's part, or that the other was making a renunciation of his claim through pure generosity. His eyes narrowed. The money was here. Millman had come across with it. Those facts were not to be gainsaid; but they were facts so utterly at variance with what months of brooding over the matter had led him to expect they should be, that he had accepted them in a sort of stunned surprise. And now this! Was he right, after all—that there was some trickery here?
“What do you mean—all, or none?” he said, a hint of menace creeping into his voice.
“Just that,” said Millman, and his tones were low and serious now. “Just what I said—all, or none.”
Dave Henderson laughed shortly.
“Then I guess it'll be—none!” he said coolly.
“Perhaps,” admitted Millman slowly. “But I hope not.” He leaned forward now, earnestly, over the table. “Dave,” he said steadily, “let us get back to the old pal days again when we believed in each other, just man to man, Dave; because now you've got a chip on your shoulder. I don't want to knock that chip off; I want to talk to you. I want to tell you why I committed what you have rightly called theft in going to that pigeon-cote and taking that money. And I want to try and make you understand that my life in prison and the story that I told you there, in spite of the fact that I have 'stolen' the money now, was not a lie. There is not a soul on this wide earth, Dave, except yourself, who knows that Charles Millman served two years in the penitentiary with prison stripes on his back. If it were known I think it would mean ruin to me, certainly in a social sense, very probably in a commercial sense as well. And yet, Dave, I would rather you knew it than that you didn't. Does that sound strange? Well, somehow, I've never pictured the flaring headlines that would be in every paper in this city if I were exposed—because, well, because I couldn't picture it—not through you, Dave—and that's the only way it could come about. And so you see, Dave, I did not ask you for faith in me without reposing my own faith in you in the same full measure.”
Dave Henderson's brows gathered. He stared at the other. It was like the Charlie Millman of old talking now. But the whole business was queer—except that the money lay here now within reach of his hand after five years of hell and torture. He made no comment.