“Damn you, Millman!” he whispered hoarsely. “I get you now! Damn you, you've no right to put the screws on me like this! Who asked you to offer your money as a sacrifice for me—to make me out a white-livered cur if I turned you down! But it doesn't go, understand? It's blackmail, that's what it is! It may be whitewashed with holiness, but it's blackmail just the same—and you can go to hell with it!”
He snatched up the package of banknotes, whipped the outer wrapping around it, and tucked it under his arm—and paused, as though awaiting or inviting some action on Millman's part. But Millman neither moved nor spoke. And then Dave Henderson, with a short laugh, crossed to the door, wrenched it open, stepped out of the room, and slammed the door behind him.
II—THE FIRST GUEST
BLIND to his surroundings, mechanically retracing his steps to the railway station, Dave Henderson swung along the street. He walked as though he would outwalk his thoughts—fast, indifferent to all about him. He clung stubbornly to the fury in which he had sought refuge, and which he had aroused within himself against Millman. He clung to this tenaciously now, because he sensed a persistent attempt on the part of some unwelcome and unfamiliar other-self to argue the pros and cons, both of Millman's motives and Millman's acts; an attempt, that sought to introduce a wedge doubt into his mind, that sought to bring about a wavering of purpose with the insidious intent of robbing him, if it could, of the reward that was now within his grasp.
Within his grasp! He laughed out sharply, as he hurried along. It was literally within his grasp! The reward was his now—his absolutely, concretely, tangibly—the hundred thousand dollars was in this innocent-looking parcel that was at this precise moment tucked under his arm. He laughed out again. There was enough in that one fact to occupy his mind and attention, and to put to utter rout and confusion those other thoughts that endeavored to make cunning and tricky inroads upon him. It shattered and swept aside, as though by the waving of some magical wand, every mental picture he had drawn of himself in New York, every plan that he had made for his sojourn here.
He had been prepared to spend weeks and months of unceasing effort to run Millman to earth; he had planned to rake the dens and dives of the underworld, to live as one of its sordid and outlawed inhabitants, if necessary, in order to get upon Millman's track; he had meant to play Millman at his own game until he had trapped Millman and the final showdown came. And, instead, he had scarcely been in New York an hour, and he was walking now along the street with the hundred thousand dollars under his arm, with Millman no longer a vicious and stealthy antagonist to be foiled and fought wherever he might be found—with nothing to do now but spend or employ this money under his arm as his fancy or his judgment dictated, free of all hindrance or restraint, for Millman was no longer a source of danger or concern, and Dave Henderson was dead to the world in general and to the police in particular, and that left Barty Lynch as the unfettered possessor of one hundred thousand dollars!
Millman had given him a month, and—ah! he was back on that tack, was he? He clenched his hand. No! A month represented time, and it was time in a purely abstract way that he was considering now; it had nothing to do with Millman, or Millman's “month,” It would take time to make new plans and new arrangements. He did not intend to act hastily.
He had come by that money by too brutally hard a road not to realize the worth of every cent of it. He needed time now to think out the future carefully. He was not a fool—to scatter that money to the winds. A thousand times in prison he had buoyed himself up with the knowledge that in the returns from that sum of money lay independence for life. That was what he had taken it for in the first place! It meant, safely invested, a minimum of five thousand dollars a year. He could get along very well, even luxuriously, on five thousand a year! He had only now to decide where and how he should invest that money; and he needed only now the time to arrive at that decision without any undue haste that might afterwards be bitterly regretted. Would he go to Australia, or to South America, for example, and begin life anew there as a gentleman of independent means? Or somewhere in Europe, perhaps? It needed time now to make this decision, and, as a natural corollary, a temporary abode was required, an abode where he could feel quite secure, both as regards his money, and as against any eleventh-hour trick of fate that might disclose his identity and spill the fat into the fire.