He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was speaking above him. There were other voices, but it was only hers that he heard.
“God help him—oh, God help him!” she was saying. He drew a long quiet breath. “I will sleep now,” he said clearly.
He would hear the Whisperer no more.
AS DEEP AS THE SEA
“What can I do, Dan? I’m broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last debt to-day. I’ve nothing but what I stand in. I’ve got prospects, but I can’t discount prospects at the banks.” The speaker laughed bitterly. “I’ve reaped and I’m sowing, the same as you, Dan.”
The other made a nervous motion of protest. “No; not the same as me, Flood—not the same. It’s sink or swim with me, and if you can’t help me—oh, I’d take my gruel without whining, if it wasn’t for Di! It’s that knocks me over. It’s the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and fool—and thief, I’ve been!”
“Thief-thief?”
Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light a cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn, handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He felt that the black words which had fallen from his friend’s lips—from the lips of Diana Welldon’s brother—were the truth. He looked at the plump face, the full amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless hand nervously feeling the golden moustache, at the well-fed, inert body; and he knew that whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not surmount it alone.
“What is it?” Rawley asked rather sharply, his fingers running through his slightly grizzled, black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted no scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was necessary, he must remain cool. What she was to him, Heaven and he only knew; what she had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as yet. “What is it—quick?” he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon Dan Welldon’s shoulder. “Racing—cards?”