What’s left is in the middle drawer of the desk. There’s only one way out now—I don’t see any other way. I thought that I could get—but what does that matter! God help me! I’m sorry.
FLEMING P. FORRESTER.
I’m sorry! It was a pitiful epitaph for a man’s life! I’m sorry! Jimmie Dale’s face softened a little—the man was dead now. “I’m sorry.... Fleming P. Forrester”—he had seen that signature on bank paper a hundred times in the old days; he had little thought ever to see it on a document such as this!
He stared at the paper for a long time, and then, from the paper, his eyes travelled over the desk, then shifted again to Forrester—and then, for the second time, he knelt beside the other on the floor. For the moment, what was referred to as “being all that was left” in the middle drawer of the desk could wait. There was another matter now. He felt hurriedly through Forrester’s vest and coat pockets—and from one of the pockets drew out a folded piece of paper. It was not what he was looking for, but it was all that rewarded his search. He unfolded the paper. It was dirty and crumpled, and the few lines written upon it were badly penned and illiterate:
The ante’s gone up—get me? Six thousand bucks. You come across with that to-morrow morning by ten o’clock—or I’ll spill the beans. And I ain’t got any more paper to write any more letters on either—savvy? This is the last.
There was no signature. Jimmie Dale read it again—and abruptly put it in his own pocket. Yes, he had liked Forrester—well enough for this anyway! The man might have a mother perhaps—it would be bad enough in any case. And those other things, the empty bottle, the sheet of note paper with its scrawled confession—what about them? He returned with a queer sort of hesitant indecision to the desk. He had no right of course to touch them unless—
He shook his head sharply, as he pulled open the middle drawer of the desk.
“Newspapers—publicity—rotten!” he muttered savagely. “One chance in ten, and—ah!”
From the back of the drawer where it had been tucked in under a mass of papers, he had extracted a little bundle of documents that were held together by an elastic band. He snapped off the band, and ran through the papers rapidly. For the most part they were bonds and stock certificates indorsed by their owners, and evidently had been held by the bank as collateral for loans.
And then suddenly Jimmie Dale straightened up, tense and alert. He had no desire, very far from any desire to be caught here, or to figure publicly in any way in the case. The street door had opened and closed again. Footsteps, those of three men, his acute, trained hearing told him, sounded on the stairs. Again there came that queer, hesitant indecision as he stood there, while his eyes travelled in swift succession from the bank’s securities in his hand to the note on the desk, to the empty bottle on the floor, to the white, upturned face of the silent form huddled against the couch.