"My associates will kill me for being duped out of their handiwork," he answered, glancing fearfully to the garden entrance. "They would perhaps pardon the miscarriage of the main scheme, but to have parted with material which might yet have been turned to account will seal my doom—that, and having allowed you to survive your triumph over us."
Forsyth saw now—or thought he saw—why the murderous crew had been ordered off in ignorance of the miscarriage. It was to enable Ziegler to make this desperate appeal for the restitution of the bogus bonds, so that he might "save his face" with his comrades. It would be ample excuse in their eyes—flatter their vanity, as their tottering chief had hinted—if he had himself been deceived by the fabricated securities. But they had seen him examine the parcel; they would know that he had made the discovery on the spot, and yet had not decreed instant death to their successful opponent. One flaw in this chain of reasoning Forsyth, himself no casuist, overlooked. It did not occur to him that the old practitioner with the white beard and the squeaky voice could have put himself right with his companions if he had hounded them on to him the moment he knew he was fingering tissue-paper and not United States Treasury bonds, good, bad, or indifferent.
"Well, Mr. Clinton Ziegler," said Forsyth, eager now to have done with the matter in the only possible way, "your appeal is dismissed with costs—on the higher scale. What does it matter to me what happens to you? If you had had your way you would have earned a legal hanging four times in the last week. If your friends save the common hangman the trouble, so much the better for all concerned, especially as they would thereby get themselves hanged also."
"Nothing will move you?"
"Absolutely nothing; and now I'll trouble you to clear off the premises if you and your gentlemen outside don't want to be treated as ordinary burglars."
"What if I call them back and have you strangled?"
With the way of escape open behind him Forsyth laughed at the futile threat, and to the group outside in the Dutch garden it must have sounded like a friendly laugh of mutual satisfaction and farewell, for he gently pushed the old man before him to the garden door and shut it on him. Then, having carefully shot the heavy bolts, he groped his way back to the stone steps leading up into the house, triumphant, yet not wholly convinced. The ignominious collapse of Mr. Clinton Ziegler was almost too good to be true, and he was painfully conscious that such an astute antagonist was not likely to have thrown all his cards on to the table.
The fact, however, remained that the schemers had been deprived of their spurious bonds, without which their carefully planned design to obtain possession of the genuine ones fell to the ground.
"And their blood-feud against the poor chap will surely cease, now that there is no crime, past or contemplated, for which he can denounce them," Forsyth comforted himself as he stepped from the door at the head of the stone stairs and hastened along the dimly lit corridor, limping no longer. His destination was the smoking-room, where he guessed that the General would be eagerly awaiting news.