She stopped him with a frown. "I want you to picture him deluding Prescott with one of the pitiful, cunning excuses that drunkards make. Wasn't it horrible in itself that he should have sunk to that? Then it shouldn't be very hard to imagine him bribing a lounger outside to buy him the whisky, and the carousal afterward with a stranger, a dead-beat and outcast low enough to profit by his evident weakness. Still, he was your father, Jimmy. Then there was the groping for matches and the upsetting of the lamp. Somebody brought Charley, and when he came your father lay with the clothes charred upon his burned limbs, still half-crazed with drink and mad with pain. Must I tell you once more what I saw when Charley brought me? I am willing, if there is nothing else that will rouse you. You have heard it before, but I want to burn it into your brain, so that however hard you try you can't blot out that scene."
Jimmy's face was grim and white, but while he sat very still his comrade rose resolutely.
"Eleanor," he said, "if you attempt to recall another incident of that horrible night I shall carry you by main force out of the room."
The girl turned to him with a little gesture. "Then I suppose I must submit. You have a man's strength and courage in you—or I think you would be afraid to marry me; but one could fancy that Jimmy has none. The daughter of the man who ruined his father has condescended to be gracious to him. Still, I have a little more to say. She is his daughter, his flesh and blood, Jimmy, and his pitiless, hateful nature is in her. That is the woman you wish to marry. The mere notion of it is horrible. Still, you can't marry her, Jimmy. You must crush her father, and drag him to his ruin. After all, there is a little manhood somewhere in you. You will take the engineer's statement to the underwriters and the police. You must—you have to."
Jimmy stood up slowly, with the veins swollen on his forehead and a gray patch in his cheek. "Eleanor," he said hoarsely, "I believe there is a devil in you; but I think you are right in this. Jordan, will you hand me that paper?"
He stood still for at least a minute when his comrade passed it to him, and the girl watched him with a little gleam in her eyes. His face was furrowed, and looked worn as well as very hard. There was not a sound in the little room, and the splash of the ripples on the Shasta's plates outside came in through the open ports with a startling distinctness. Jordan felt that the tension was becoming almost unendurable. Then Jimmy turned slowly toward his sister, and though the pain was still in his face it had curiously changed. There was a look in his blue eyes that sent a thrill of consternation through her. They were very steady, and she knew that she had failed.
"I can't do it. It was not the girl's fault, and she shall not be dragged through the mire," he said. Then he looked at his comrade. "What I am going to do may cost you a good deal of money, and my appointment to the Shasta is, of course, in your hands. I am going straight from here to Merril's house."
"Well," said Jordan simply, "it may cost us both a good deal, but I guess I must face it. If I were fixed as you are, that is just what I should do."
Jimmy said nothing, but he went out swiftly, and Eleanor turned to her companion with a very bitter smile when the door closed behind him.
"Ah!" she said, "has that girl beguiled you too? You had Merril in your hands, and instead of crushing him you are going to smooth his troubles away."