For the first time in many years Mehitabel Crump was shocked into immobile silence. She was absolutely petrified. She could not believe the words she heard.
“You didn’t look at it that way, of course,” added Shea hastily. Earnestness grew upon him, and deep conviction. “But it’s true. If it were ten cents or ten dollars, it might not matter. But—ten thousand dollars! It must go back.”
The blue eyes of Mrs. Crump hardened like agates. Her mouth clenched grimly. Her wrinkled features tightened into fighting lines. She was dumbly amazed that the magnitude of the sum did not appeal to Thady Shea’s cupidity; but she was vigorously and fiercely determined that the money was to be his. It was not for herself that she wanted it.
When she made answer, it was with a virile insistence that drove home every word like a blow.
“You got no call to insult me, Thady Shea, by callin’ me a thief; mind that! Are you crazy or just plain fool? Mackintavers an’ Dorales comes along thinking to trim us right and proper, like they done by other poor folks, thinking to rob a lone widder woman, thinking to fool you into robbing me. That there check for ten thousand was the jackpot. Mackintavers signed it as such, knowin’ it to be such, stakin’ it agin’ Number Sixteen to win or lose. You didn’t know that the prop’ty was recorded in your name—but he knew!
“He lost, and you can bet he ain’t said nothing about losing them table stakes! What call you got to beef about winning that bet? It’s plumb legal, cashed at a bank, sanctified by Sandy hisself over the phone. You’d be a fool not to take money after you’d won it in a game like that! If ye want——”
For the second time Mrs. Crump came to a decided and bewildered halt.
She was entirely convinced that to take the money was legitimate; she was convinced that it had been lawfully won, that Thady Shea was actually entitled to it. She had chuckled over the coup a hundred times. She had chuckled a hundred times over the grimly delightful irony of cashing that check, of giving Mackintavers a counter-thrust that he would remember. Yet, although she was presenting her argument with entire conviction, she was conscious that it was like presenting her argument in the face of a stone wall.
Somehow Thady Shea was ignoring her argument. Its point seemed quite lost upon him. He stood before her, flinty, untouched, unheeding. The slight glint of scorn in his eye, real or fancied, flicked Mrs. Crump on the raw; it lashed her into real and unassumed anger.
“All that is quite true,” he said. In his manner was a gentleness, a frightful gentleness, a gentleness so entire and calm that it was hideous. One would have said that he was speaking to a little child.