“Does he admit my charges?”
“He hasn’t denied them.”
“Will he admit them?”
“I’ve outlined exactly what we must have––deeds to his property and an acknowledged statement of the Joseph Weir and James Dent affair, supplementing the Saurez affidavit, which by the way he at first thought we did not possess but which an account of what happened last night in the mountains and your recovery of the same”––Pollock’s eyelid dropped for an instant towards Weir––“convinced him of. This statement is not to be produced as evidence against his associates except in the last extremity, and if not needed is always to be kept secret. We are to give him, when the papers are signed, a draft for ten thousand dollars. This will permit him to have something to live on. He states that he will want to go from San Mateo at once.”
During this speech Weir’s eyes had glanced to and fro between the lawyer ticking off his words with his glasses and the figure in the leather chair. Old and shattered as Judge Gordon had suddenly become, wretched as Weir saw him to be, the engineer nevertheless felt no pity. The man had been in the conspiracy that had ruined his father; he suffered now not because of remorse but through fear of public opinion; and was a 217 fox turned craven because he found himself enmeshed in a net. And to save his own skin he was selling out his friends.
Weir’s face went dark, but Pollock quickly stepped forward and drew him into a corner of the room.
“Keep calm, man,” was the lawyer’s low advice. “Do you think if we had him tied up as tightly as I’ve made him believe that I should propose a compromise in his case. He’s the weak link. Do you think I’ve had an easy time the last three hours bringing him to the point he’s at? I had to invent evidence that couldn’t possibly exist. I had to give him a merciless mental ‘third degree.’ I told him if he refused I was going to Sorenson with the same offer, who would jump at the chance. And, my dear man, we haven’t, in reality, enough proof to convict a mouse since you lost that paper. So now, so far as he’s concerned, you must bend a little, a very little––and you’ll be able to hang the remaining three.”
This incisive reasoning was not to be denied.
“I yield,” said Weir.
Beaming, Mr. Pollock walked back to the table.