“No, no!” Carling pushed away the pen. “I'm ruined—ruined as it is. But this would mean the penitentiary, too—”
“Where you tried to send an innocent man in your place, you hound; where you—”
“Some other way—some other way!” Carling was babbling. “Let me out of this—for God's sake, let me out of this!”
“Carling,” said Jimmie Dale hoarsely, “I stood beside a little bed to-night and looked at a baby girl—a little baby girl with golden hair, who smiled as she slept.”
Carling shivered, and passed a shaking hand across his face.
“Take this pen,” said Jimmie Dale monotonously; “or—THIS!” The automatic lifted until the muzzle was on a line with Carling's eyes.
Carling's hand reached out, still shaking, and took the pen; and his body, dragged limply forward, hung over the desk. The pen spluttered on the paper—a bead of sweat spurting from the man's forehead dropped to the sheet.
There was silence in the room. A minute passed—another. Carling's pen travelled haltingly across the paper then, with a queer, low cry as he signed his name, he dropped the pen from his fingers, and, rising unsteadily from his chair, stumbled away from the desk toward a couch across the room.
An instant Jimmie Dale watched the other, then he picked up the sheet of paper. It was a miserable document, miserably scrawled:
“I guess it's all up. I guess I knew it would be some day. Moyne hadn't anything to do with it. I stole the money myself from the bank to-night. I guess it's all up.