“I don't get you!” he said shortly. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I say, Dave,” Millman answered. “That if you won't return it yourself, I will pay it back out of my own pocket.”
For a minute Dave Henderson eyed the other incredulously, then he threw back his head and laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh.
“You will, eh!” he said. “Well, if you feel that way about it, go to it! Maybe you can afford it; I can't!”
“Yes,” said Millman soberly, “as far as that goes, I am a rich man, and I can afford it. But, Dave, I want to say this to you”—he was standing up now—“the richest man in the world couldn't afford to part with a nickel as well as you could afford to part with that hundred thousand dollars there. It isn't money that you've got at stake, Dave. Well, that's all. Either you pay—or I do. It's up to you, Dave.”
Dave Henderson's hands were clenching and unclenching, as he gripped at the edge of the table. Vaguely, dimly, he sensed an awakening something within him which seemed to be striving to give birth to some discordant element that sought to undermine and shake his resolution. It was not tangible yet, it was confused; his mind groped out in an effort to grasp it in a concrete way so that he might smother it, repudiate it, beat it down.
“No!” he shot out.
Millman shook his head.
“I don't ask you for an answer to-night,” he said gravely. “I don't think you're ready to give an answer now, and be fair to yourself. It's a pretty big stake, Dave. You'll never play for a bigger—and neither will I. I'm staking a hundred thousand dollars on the Dave Henderson I know—the chap that's dead for a while. It doesn't matter much now whether the money is back in the hands of the estate in a day, or a week, or a month from now. Take a month, Dave. If at the end of a month the estate has not received the money from you—and I shall know whether it has or not—it will receive a hundred thousand dollars in cash from me, anonymously, with the statement that it is to square the account for which Dave Henderson was convicted.”
Dave Henderson raised a clenched hand, and swept it, clenched, across his eyes. He had it now! He understood that thing within him that seemed quite as eager to offer battle as he was to give it. And it was strong, and insidious, and crafty. He cursed at it. It took him at a disadvantage. It placed him suddenly on the defensive—and it angered him. It placed him in a position that was not a nice one to defend. He cursed at it; and blind fury came as his defense. And the red that had surged into his face left it, and a whiteness came, and his lips thinned into a straight line.